Truth, Liberty and Justice

A Weblog

10 15 09

With apology to Monty Python, time for a little arithmetic which itself gives us some flying circus styled headaches; The news this morning was that the stimulus package saved or created an estimated thirty thousand jobs. So far about 450 billion of the total stimulus allocation has been pre-defined or spent, thus by dividing the number of jobs reported saved into the amount spent thus far to "stimulate", it has cost the taxpayer (or more accurately the taxpayers' great great grandchildren) fifteen million borrowed dollars for each job "saved". Further, a very very small portion of the bailout funds from the Bush days on loan to banks and investment houses has been repaid to Treasury. Of $800 billion, about $70 billion has made its way home. Given this, the banking industry is now preparing to give itself seventeen billion (with a B) bucks in bonuses. So that this is clear in its audacious scope, the people who ran the American economy aground and would be (and should be) broke and out of business today if government were not a wholely owned subsidiary of the high hat set, was bailed out by taxpayer money by virtue of Washington connections, and is rewarding itself after one year of post-disaster existence for a job well done. They argue of course that those bonuses are totally kosher, just as the insurance companies are now arguing a case for themselves against healthcare reform. Scared yet? Feel like a dolt? Not to worry. April 15 is just around the corner. You get an opportunity to protest by paying up.

10 10 09

For Adam Smith, the "invisible hand" is created by the conjunction of the forces of self interest, competition and supply/demand. Thus we all are capable of influencing allocation of resources in society.

It constantly amazes me how little people know about their own fiat monetary system. Some truths in the last few years are that for the entire Bush administration, and so far the Obama administration, your money is diminished in value by inflation factors higher than what a bank is willing to pay in interest for their rental of YOUR money. Add the insult of paying regular income tax on the piddling amount earned from that money, year after year, the value of money weakens, the value having been transferred to somebody else (away from you). At the moment, consumers en masse are holding back spending trying to save more in an effort to protect themselves in case of a catastrophic economic event. However at some point demand for all kinds of things will increase (all those washing machines etc have to be either repaired or replaced) and consumers will bid up prices for limited amounts of washing machines etc. This represents the classic inflationary spiral. By then the fed will no doubt have had to raise interest rates in hopes it can choose the moment precisely in time when the psychologic danger is passed such that a balance can be reached. However the fly in the ointment THIS time around (we 've been on this path before several times) is that the federal debt is so high, any rise in interest rates will make it very much harder to reduce that debt. So raising rates to protect the economy will do harm to those who have been quietly moving the value of your money from you to them for the last decade so they could avoid making hard choices for purposes of giving them a shot at re election etc. And to make matters even worse, baby boomers will bound over the retirement finish line to collect Social Security, the surplus of which has also been borrowed over the years, the surplus of which is represented by huge stacks of paper notes which one assumes will become due and payable at some point. Thus the decision to raise rates will do harm to the borrowing federals. A classic case of damned if you do, damned if you don't for monetary system managers. By then of course it will be too late. Already we see owners of other currencies (other countries who are more responsible to their self interests than we have been) pulling out of the dollar and storing their value in a currency more sane and stable. We see this activity happening to some degree now with whispers about oil being valued in something besides the dollar, plus the rise in gold (which is NOT fiat, but then again you can't "spend" it....at least thus far). And, as always, this mess is totally the voters' fault. But then when the voter understands monetary systems, that might raise an entirely new political problem set. Complicated, isn't it? And to put a point on this, you can in no way escape whatever consequences all this may have. And you have the capacity to contribute, and the wherewithal for further economic decline, depending on your personal choices. And to this point, Adam Smith is proven absolutely correct.

10 1 09

Listening to a Congressional Hearing questioning Chairman Bernanke, and watching markets as I listen, I come to the conclusion that American markets are completely gamed to the benefit of the top end. More money is moved by gaming that system than by producing viable products. I'm also convinced that the only reason political leaders want workers to re-enter the workforce is so they may be taxed. At ten percent unemployment, the outlay of social-safety-net programs expended toward this end is completely out of control. The control of healthcare costs has been completely lost to the politics of making money by selling healthcare and pharma products. The non-starting elements of energy reform will place America MORE reliant on ever more expensive imported petrochemicals, not less. Meanwhile, the Congress debates party-based place-card settings. The world is moving toward a world currency other than the U.S. dollar, and once that happens America will have lost the only thing over which it has control that the world can respect. When that happens, the transition from world-leader to has-been will be complete. A couple of generations from now, the prodigy of those who destroyed the system for their own personal gain will be equalized and America can settle in to centuries of sameness just as the Dutch, or Spain, or Portugal, or England, or the Romans. Just as many civilizations have risen and fallen under the same unrealistic notions and for the same myopic reasons. The good news of course is that this process happens so slowly that few alive today will even take notice.

9 14 09

I have proof that Americans are idiots. I don't mean YOU individually by the way....I mean in the collective. First, Americans elected George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Second, Americans continue to pay taxes to support the unsupportable. Third, the people who are elected to represent the American people are, in the face of all available evidence, idiots. Fourth, while the ship of state is sinking, while the economy moves toward long term ruin, Americans want to argue with each other about who is 'Hitler', who is 'socialist', who is....well....an 'idiot'. In no particular order, our problems are identifiable and mostly can be, or could have been, relatively easily resolved. However we'd rather blame, cajole, fight, name-call. In no order of importance our problems can be traced to only a handful of major issues....energy, meaningful regulation, corruption, waste. With corrupted leadership creating regulation (or the absence of it) for purposes of giving special privilege almost always leading to waste, energy will never be meaningfully addressed, thus the symptoms of these maladies such as poor economy, poor social systems, inadequate or crumbling infrastructure, monetary defaults, financial free-fall all will continue if not worsen while the tangential child-like bickering (YOU LIE!) goes on. The election of one man is not enough to cure America of her illness. Sometimes disease kills the patient, and in this case it more and more looks like we've gone too long to be able to take the necessary medicine with any hope for recovery. Therefore, we can only conclude that we are all idiots.

8 4 09

Health care costs made simple: think of a pot of funding from which money is available to be spent on health care. Now think of a pot of money to which money finally arrives for the rendering of that health care service. Now think of a pot of money in between those two. That center pot of money takes from both ends, assumes what health care the first pot of money may use, and forces rising costs at the third pot level so that a negotiation point can be set from which to get to aworkable price to cover costs of delivery plus a very nice living for those in the business of delivering healthcare. From the SECOND pot comes the money that buys the tallest buildings in just about every city, legions of people hired to analyze how to maximize that second pot of money, along with salaries and profits offering good livings to anyone involved with administering that second pot of cash. Of course pot number one is the consumer, the patient, the point of the exercise. Pot number three is the medical community, and pot number two is the insurance industry. Now that this somewhat dysfunctional system (for some, not all) is perceived to be an unrealistic model for the long term, can it be reasonably assumed that government, the only entity deemed big enough to handle the problem given the money that passes through this system is federally created, is going to have to make adjustments to all three pots of cash? From the first pot,MORE MONEY will have to be extracted from the potential patient pool if the goal is such that everyone in the country has access to the health services rendered by pot number three. From pot number two, the changed rules that currently meter the amount of money that is paid to pot number three, rules such as pre-existing conditions, copayments etc, and this will require MORE MONEY. And finally, pot number three will have to accommodate more maladies, millions of new participants, and long term illnesses of a serious, expensive or pre-condition nature, thus requiring MORE MONEY.

Conclusion: Health Care is going to cost LOTS more money if a revised system maintains the 'three pot' model. Of course, anyone with sixth grade arithmetic skills might suggest that of those three pots mentioned in the above model, one of those pots is both overpaid and not vital to a working system. But the single payer system (pot one and two are combined) such as it may be called, rubs raw those profiting the most from the dysfunction of the current system, has the most lobbying representation, is most deeply rooted in capitalism, and has the greatest hold on the political system of government afforementioned as the ONE entity with any hope to change the system. Therefore expect a revised system to revise very little and cost much more.

7 20 09

I suppose the great disappointment for now is the realization of just how fiscally dysfunctional America has become. Unemployement moves higher, again disguised and obfuscated by government via contorted measuring guages, the use of code being the guise, U2 being entirely more optimistic than U6, none of which can usefully translate our realities in 1929 terms. We don't really know unemployment levels. We don't really know inflation potential for damage that will surely be our next challenge, but with a nasty twist. Still, no energy policy, a health bill coming down almost sure to fail in present form since it piles on costs and addresses none of the issues that might require the health care industry to norm itself to the economic realities of the humans it pretends to service, nor defangs the giant money sucking middleman we call "insurance". The auto companies are emerging from bankrupt situations with no avenues charted to adjust to energy or economic realities. And population levels, each member hell-bent on consumption with little or no mind paid to production or creativity, continues to rise from natural and immigration sources. Goverment is pouring money into the wallets of those who ruined the system in the first place, while federally purchased champagne flows over the tongues of those who produce nothing, except bonuses for those who are best connected to the mansion-class. The good news is that the dollar is propped up by countries (China) who cannot cash in lest the dollar-based assets they hold might crumble....thus they're forced to keep their chips in the western game.....for now. Meanwhile, Congress furiously fiddles Nero style. Republicans who never got the message never will, and Democrats who didn't vicariously pick up on the lessons offered by the now disjointed Republicans seem to head down the same path for the same ego-based reasons, unknowing, unthinking, happy to have a heel on the neck of any counterweight. Should we who hired these reprentatives be hopeful? It appears likely not.

7 4 09

July fourth. Noting that California is now passing out script that it prints for itself to pay its debt to continue its highly socialized ways, even while it demands from its citizens hard cash, the country in which it exists lives far outside its means. The good news is that savings rates are higher than the Bush debacle which indicates that at least some of our citizens are personally getting the message about money and living within means. Thomas Jefferson suggested the following in an 1808 letter he wrote to Martha Jefferson Randolph;

Thomas Jefferson, on living within means:

"But I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of living within their income, to calculate in good time how much less pain will cost them the plainest stile (sic) of living which keeps them out of debt, than after a few years of splendor above their income, to have their property taken away for debt when they have a family growing up to maintain and provide for."

Goodbye California. It was nice to know ya.

3 28 09

If you've ever heard of Ivan Pavlov (yes....the doggie guy), then you might understand and possibly even agree with me why the current federal schemes are not going to work in terms of long term repair of American economics. If you've been personally toeing the line and doing the right thing, living within your means, saving for your needs, for your retirement, playing it safe and keeping your bills paid, then your assets are being sapped to bail out those who did not. Your house is worth less. Your money is worth less. Your money earns little interest, if any. Your income is down (or eliminated). You can bet that inflation is going to do more damage, and it's probably too late to protect yourself meaningfully by shifting everything to hard assets like gold. On the other hand, if you bought more than you could pay for, borrowed to the limit, enjoyed the fat life on the cuff, then the money you borrowed will be paid back with inflated and cheap dollars, if indeed you even do such an honorable thing as honor your debts. The house you live in can be refinanced at interest rates subsidized by a money-printing government. Or even better, you can go out and buy a house at almost half its market value if you can scratch up the money. Your school loan can be paid in cheaper dollars, or even forgiven if it falls under one of the "stimulus" rules. Government is desperately trying to rescue you at the expense of the responsible guy who will be paying for your responsibilities, as will his children. And theirs. And theirs. And thus, rewarding the bad behavior will give us more bad behavior. And punishing responsible behavior will give us less responsible behavior. (Do you hear Ivan's dogs barking now?) Meanwhile, back at Rancho Congresso where the money flows even when there isn't any, earmarks are tacked on like donkey tails. There are so many that we no longer can see the donkey, and the very ones who decry this irresponsible behavior are the loudest to cry foul. Until we become a nation of fiscal common sense, if that's possible, we can expect more irresponsible behavior. And more. And more. BARK BARK.

3 25 09

There it was....the first ringing of the bell. Rather a loud one at that. The Chinese are suggesting a world currency so they can move away from the dollar. Their own currency, the yuan, is tied to the U.S. dollar, and of course it's no secret that the Chinese have loaned the good old U.S.A a few trillion to help her get past her addiction as a spendthrift junkie. Not satisfied to borrow a few trillion, Uncle Sam has been printing up bucks a trillion at a whack. So it's not really unreasonable of the Chinese to make such a self preserving suggestion. The immediate problem is that America seems to be unphased by this rather loud suggestion and continues onward toward the great wealth distribution, even though there is less wealth to distribute. Meanwhile the filthy rich, and by filthy I mean it in the most literal terms, seem to have no compunction but to continue the game of high personal bailout expectation. They are, after all, filthy rich, however that may have happened, therefore first in line given they define the line in the first place. So now with newly printed trillions and the debt bomb doing ticky ticky, we all wonder what magic there may be in a new adminstration to somehow parlay keyboard-tapping and dancing-with-the-stars into big bucks for everyone, including healthcare. And retirement. And bonuses. The Dr. Dooms among us are suggesting that our directions are counterproductive given that politicians have no stomach for hard decisions beyond earmarking money we don't have for projects we don't need (in their state of course). So with gutless pols, half witted home borrowers, defaulters, spendthrifts, and fuel-burners deluxe, we find ourselves staring at the oncoming headlights. Wonder what the new currency will be named and who will have control over THAT money minting process? Want to bet, whoever it is, they end up printing a little extra for themselves?

3 14 09

The Jon Stewart/Cramer face-off was somewhat satisfying in that Stewart razor-slash-witted the Ivy League razzberried Cramer forcing the admission that the financial systems are gamed. Certain well-borns of the privileged, as they've always, live very well...extremely richly...while the vast majority loses equity earned from the far slower traditions of personal, often grinding work. One of those gamers is in jail now, having lived very hog-highly up to his current age of seventy. His well adorned wife still enjoys the surroundings of her seven million dollar New York penthouse. But for the single Madoff in jail, thousands will be toasting the good life this weekend incarcerated only by their luxury surroundings. Shifting right and noticing that Obama is sending gillions in relief, delivered via middle-men (for a small fee) to the poor lost souls of the downtrod, we have to consider that the wild expenditure of all this Chinee-borrowed money will do next to nothing in terms of unemployment "relief", will probably give ne'er do wells an excuse to wait ever hopeful for the next Pavlovian handout instead of applying themselves to something immediately useful, and will more deeply dig the U.S. debt hole. Of course we have to give the new administration time to fit into some rather tight fitting shoes. But having immediately spent all the money in the tax-candy shop, those shoes may shrink uncomfortably rather than conform. To be hopeful, the stock market is up nine percent this week from bargain levels. However the speeded debt clock is about to tick past the eleven trillion mark http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ and many many thousands of our population are now daily putting in claim for their lifelong promised retirement benefits. No energy solution is in place, war is opening on another front, the military is as wasteful as ever, unable to win a conventional war since no war is conventional, yet this doesn't stop the spending in preparation for future war that will not come to convention. So with huge inventories of defensive buggie whips at the ready, planes buzzing around, burning the last of the earth's fossil fuels, and no obvious evidence in terms of collective lifestyle shift (highways are still Toyota bumper to Toyota bumper) we face the demise of American industry as Mexican drug beheadings move northward. Our responses, of course, are immediate and wrong, but why break up a perfect eight year record. All this leaves us to wonder what unthinkable catastrophe is going to finally dislodge us from our collective lethargy. Until then, more of the same of the same of more of the same.

3 3 09

The Marbury vs. Madison article in Newsweek last week (Sloan McKean) makes an interesting point, long lost in history. The currency of this is that the Federalists and the Republicans have something important in common. These days, Limbaugh bearing the big-fat standard as they attempt to sing together in diminishing numbers, the Republicans are showing how political disdain for an opposing but winning party can destroy an otherwise viable entity. The Federalists were so opposed to the Jefferson Administration, and displayed political bile so openly, that it caused their extinction. They killed their own party over small mindedness. They lost their way, and their party. The Federalists, as the GOP of today, were "unyielding". Given a hell bent direction chosen by a current-in-name-only Republican party whose time has come and gone in terms of the last two election cycles, it dug Father America into one hell of a hole. War, debt, deficit, economy, jobs, monetary system, special interests, spending, taxation, lop-sided favoritism (think Kellog Brown Root/Schlumberger) and a recalcitrance old-fashioned enough to harken back to the seventeen hundreds, or perhaps the Civil War. Immovable at a time when their own country is in peril, refusing to assist in the bailing of the very boat on which they stay afloat, the GOP chooses incendiary commentary, behavior befitting an elementary schoolyard, and a myopia that could serve as an Iranian metaphor. It's so bad they now even fight with each other over no point at all. Schoolyard bullies playing King of the Hill, only no hill. Not any more. They had vast opportunity, and time and again they squandered the good will of the very nation over which they illude themselves to possess relevance. Both sad and laughable. The entertainer Limbaugh and the GOP "leader" Steele trading jabs while the fiscal-conservative base slips away like so much sand. The charitable amongst the talk show types suggest there might be an intellectual discussion going on within the GOP, but that's not what publicly surfaces. Might be time to change the party name again, eh? Is "Federalist" still too toxic?

3 1 09

There's heated talk about tax fairness lately. The new President wants to take some of the tax load off the middle class and pass it to the upper class. Here is the current income tax scale (you can go out on the web to check) showing what percentage of earned income is taxed based on a scale as set by the U.S. Congress (not the IRS).

Note that if you earned a thousand taxable dollars all year long (beyond standard deductions and exemptions), the government wants a hundred of it. If that amount moves up to $32.5k, government increases their demand for the difference of FIVE percent. If that number goes to $70k, the demand leaps an additional TEN percent. But now we reach into the lower levels of upper middle class and for the next tier, the increase is only THREE percent, then those lower uppers earning up to $357,700 per year, the government wants an additional FIVE percent, and from there up to the millions and millions that the upper upper crust 'earn', only a TWO percent demand all the way to infinity (which is obviously how much they WANT to earn no matter what damage it does). So for the middle class at the middle, a TEN percent leap, and at the upper end of the upper end, a TWO percent increase. Thus is the direction taken by the whole trickle down notions of those who make these stupid rules (obviously influenced by those with the most to protect). As Mr. Willie Sutton may have noted, government has to go where the money is in order to conduct its wasteful ways, and that's been the middle class. But now with such a top-heavy economic environment the government has to again go where the money is....to the top. And this should be the case with caps on Social Security requirements as well. But prepare to hear some real whining from the very rich and their highly paid tax representatives (aka Congressman whomever) as this issue is debated in the unbiased but heavily indebted halls of our beloved Legislative Branch. We're talking about a modest increase proposal, and a return to the scale used during the Clinton years. Woe will the super rich be to have to cover their country's economic backside during these troubled days, after all these years of sucking up pretty much all the increases in wealth. Speaking for myself, the outcome of this debate will tell me more about the state of the union than the .... well...the State of the Union.

For reference, here is the 1998 tax scale...from a time long gone when a zillion bucks was considered real money. I guess we can assume that the middle class is going to pay that 28 percent no matter what.

2 26 09

Want simple answers? I'll give it a try. Want medicine to be less expensive and more available? Make more doctors. LOTS more. If you have lots of tire stores, grocery stores, roofers, or anything in the market actively attempting to convert a commodity or service to money, the price goes down with competition. Whatever entity exists that keeps medicine expensive by curtailing competition must be put to sleep. AMA? Doctors associations which attempt to maintain high levels of income? Medical obfuscation? Simple answer; make more product. Another very important aspect is malpractice. Frivolous lawsuits have to be eliminated. Make enough product (providers, including specialized) and when malfeasance is legitimately discovered, excommunicate them from the profession. Take the insurance factor out of the equation. Insurers are just very very VERY expensive middlemen.

Want more money to lend? Price it correctly. If you're a saver today, you're lending to institutions for less than your money costs you to own, particularly now that government is forced to roll the presses (inflate). Get interest rates up that satisfy the price of money. Bingo.....lots of money magically becomes available to lend. That same money must be loaned at prices of a correct value. (Bankers should NEVER be filthy rich by working in the banking industry.) If you choose to borrow and consume, you pay the price. This goes for government as well.

Defense spending. Spend only on defense. America can't seem to control her cross-border crusades. Our defense systems are regularly offensively depleted for some crusade or another. There are no shortages of human atrocities. We can't fix ANY of it....much less all of it. Save the money for the big local one, and if we are FORCED into war by direct attack, may that war be short by a ruthless defensive retalliation that completely obliterates the attackers, the attackers' dogs, mothers, chickens, grandbabies etc such that there's no mistaking the cost to anyone attacking America. Otherwise, let's give up the notion that the Department Of Defense is some kind of open federal purse for every weapons-peddler with a big Wall Street connection. We've learned THAT lesson. RIGHT??

Foreign policy; Simple statement.....you can't buy friends.

Democracy styled voting; time to hook up. Voting should be as electronically secure as a credit card number. One number, one vote. Do it by phone etc and save the fuel, time, apathy, long lines, etc. And any entity that games that system shall be by Federal edict hung publicly by their testicles.

Fuel. We have one sure-fire way of dealing with this problem right now.....conservation. We no doubt will move to generation of electrical power via wind, solar, nuclear, geo, and anything else that we can get to turn a physical dynamo without turning the sky black or poisoning our waters. But we can't print money to buy fuel from despots so that we can individually run heavy iron around for each and every little task we face. If we're going to live in our soccer mom vans, those vehicles need to be powered by renewable, domestic-generated power, storable in domestic tech-savvy batteries of a highly recyclable nature.

Education. Not everyone is educ-able to the hopes of our fiscal salvation. Let's get real. Time to sort out those who can play football from those who can split atoms, and be smart enough to realize that some can do both, and some neither. A simple rating-scale will do, recognizing that people change over their lives and should be rated periodically and not just once, forever cemented to a number tattooed to their forearm. And work, whether performed with a shovel or a microscope must be HONORED. This includes compensation that fits the task. Paying a guy ten million dollars to play a game is no way to send a meaningful message. Paying a skilled digger-driver wages that forces him to find a second job does not send a meaningful message.

Simplistic answers? Yeah. Too simple? We'll see.

2 24 09

Ahhhh.....the sweet and satisfying smell of the truth. Long long overdue. But so refreshingly appreciated. Truth. Just tell us the truth and we'll figure things out. And Obama, as we can easily tell from all evidence, unless passed through some sort of GOP/Limbaugh filter, is laying our national situation out for us while he proposes real, and hopefully workable, solutions, even in the face of the ever-vigilant Washington-wonkers. In a meeting with Senators and others, one GOP lawmaker got up to complain that the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, wasn't letting the GOP have its say. It sounded a bit like 'telling the teacher'. Obama responded that (I paraphrase) it indeed is up to the majority to be inclusive, and it's up to the minority to be constructive and not just want to blow things up. The winds of truth went through me at hurricane strength at that very important and candid moment. There was no rancor, no contention, no belittlement. Just a single sentence containing simple truth. So now, we have opportunity at long long LONG last. We can face a meaningfully constructed budget, Social Security, debt, deficit, spending, taxation, social fairness, economy and foreign policy. All very serious situations long long LONG ignored by eight years of obfuscation, laid open for repair efforts, made possible by truth. It smells so very sweet. Here is my personal salute to those who practice it.

2 21 09

Good opine and bad opine. First, the good. Obama seems on the right track (although I reserve the right to criticize certain elements of the larger plan), and his people are serious minded, well chosen, intelligent, strong thinking people (I include Hillary) of sensical direction and not blinded by ideology or party. We have a fair chance of finding our way back onto a path toward world respect, and perhaps a modicum of domestic economic moderation. We might even attain a state of non-war at some point, hopefully to reacquire a basis for national defendability. We may not get to a standard of living that we may have hoped or dreamed, at least in the next two decades. But we just may (no promises) avoid catastrophe, at least until unthinking voters place another Bush into office (God save us from right-wing ideology).

The bad; I've been writing, back and forth, to Republican Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss. He (and his ilk) doesn't get it. He is one who clings to party and ideology, does favors for select good ole Georgia boys, and in the face of economic crisis thinks the country is in a state of "runaway spending" (his term). Where's this guy been? All this time the Bush administration has been spending billions on pre-emptive (elective) war, trillions to bail out those entities that should have been allowed just fail as a result of mismanagement, funding the rich with fat tax breaks while breaking the middle class with expanded governmental demand on family income as if government comes first, THEN citizenship. In other words, for eight years the same guys who took us from surplus to deficit, four to eleven trillion dollars in debt NOW wants to kvetch about 'runaway spending' as we try to steer a huge ship of economic proportions back to a useful course using the only rudder available. They just don't get it. But...and this is yet more good news...they WILL get it eventually, and even better news....we don't need them to get that rudder turned. They can whine politics all they like, but the compass seems to be correcting. And that certainly is the important and larger point.

2 18 09

Let's postulate for a moment that you've lived responsibly by the rules for a long time now. You pay your bills. Your home is paid for. You saved your money, drove an old car, did without, and you didn't fall for every fad that came along over the last thirty years. Meanwhile hordes of people were tempted to buy far more house, car, vacation, name-it, than they could ever hope to afford without borrowing heavily, and some bought more than one so they could flip for a quick buck. All that money was borrowed, securitized, swap defaulted, and packaged unsecured, uninsured and it ended up unwinding our economy. Meanwhile a few shysters taking advantage of the fact the SEC is sound asleep, promised the very wealthy eight percent returns and collected money market funds that ended up being...uh.... Ponzi'd. Poor babies. And states like California kept right on spending for those highly deserving entitled-types out there....and California and other states ran out of money....Ahnald might "BE BACK", but for now he can't even cover his income tax refunds. So he's firing state workers. And now we find ourselves on the very edge of the very edge. Federal overnight funds are now at the very reasonable price of zero, thus frugal and responsible American savers are paying the price in that they get no interest for saving their money. Government is printing cash, so people with a little money are being inflated out of it. Government is offering aforementioned real estate morons refinancing/restructure by doubling and redoubling federal involvement at the Fannie Mae levels. And another trillion has slipped through the congress, this time not for elective war, not to bail out those poor highly bonus deserving investment bankers, but for.....uh....stimulating us to .... uh .....spend...or save....or something. So the irresponsible of the near past are being assisted with borrowed cash, and the responsible are being offered.....nothing. Nothing at all. Now the question: what do you think the condition of the economy is going to be in ten years. Take your time to take a guess. I can wait.

2 17 09

Well...here's the economic bottom line, and you aren't going to like it;

We cannot stimulate that which cannot exist. We have shipped the tasks of making things abroad and have relinquished the experience of meaningful work. We've sat on our asses for years at computer keys thinking somehow this had long term value. And for Bill Gates it did. But for America, not the case. And we heavily tax any behavior that's even slightly domestically successful. So now we're losing the big companies which brought American wealth to its pinnacle and we're trying to shore up the standard of living that's being lost with borrowed money. Young Americans see themselves as deserving, entitled, special, and are expecting SOMEBODY ELSE to get busy and shore up their consumption-based fuel-dependent lives. Not going to happen. After the Obama trillions are gone and the big picture changes little, after we realize that factories are not going to spring up, that red tape is not magically going to be cut, and that personal expectations are not going to magically be met, we will collectively realize that the American standard of living is going down except for those who garnered for themselves those millions to whom borrowed federal money temporarily flows. We'll be able to borrow only so much. And for the rest of us, the most of us, the majority of us....it's not looking good. For now, watch your Asian-made TV, drive your Japanese-made car, wear your Malaysian-made sweater, sport your Mexican-made sneakers and realize that the picture of your prosperity is about to change noticeably, and perhaps within your lifetime, permanantly. Realize also that, as a voter, you contributed to the problem in a collective sense. We will now pay for bad choices.

2 16 09

Do the Republicans think this is some kind of game? They offer nothing but resistence and criticism? They're poor losers. They're bad winners. They whine. They obstruct. The dumbest of the dumb denied the sixtieth vote of the hyper contorted Senate whose rules require not a majority, but a super majority to do ANYTHING AT ALL, and dumble bumble Georgia voted in the same old-same old, offering nothing at all to the solution of perhaps the greatest fiscal peril America has faced in eight decades. Here we are, impaled with debt, no fuel, mired in elective war, no plan after eight years of Republican stumble bumble, and suddenly they have the cods to think they have better answers than launching into SOMETHING about the very problems they created. Children, purveyors of war, whiners, spenders of American wealth for nothing but the wisp of their own egos. I for one will unlikely vote for another Republican in my lifetime.

2 10 09

Stunningly delivered. Every point hit with extreme precision. Words used like exactly targeted, telescopically directed bullets from a sniper's rifle. The bottom line being that doing SOMETHING is required, and doing NOTHING is not among our options. Exactly. Being human we have to make our choices. We have to take a step onto SOME corrective path. We don't always know whether that path is the correct one, but we can keep an eye on the trail to see, step by step, if the clues inspire continued direction. So this first prime time press conference went with only the slightest reference to the mess inherited by the fiasco of the Bush Administration to make the point, yet again, that the mess has been inherited and meaningful action is required. Doubled national debt, and mismanagement from surplus to deficit, the people who backed the Bush Administration are still posturing to keep the support of the few who can be only described as angry obstructionists. The country is in trouble, and we have to return to the bottom line of national collective solutions to survive in a very competitive world. That bottom line is individual responsibility based on work, meaningful productivity, savings, and a sense of nation.

2 6 09

After the theatrics in the Senate yesterday of Senator Lindsey Graham, a special brand of small-man in my humble opinion, I started to wonder what it means to be a 'conservative'. The word is rooted in my family, my history, my geography. But then, so is the phrase "penny wise pound foolish". When General Sanchez jumped the pre-surge shark and actually told the conservative Congressional Committee the number of troops that were going to be required to efficiently win the Iraq war, he was promptly relieved from duty. Instead, we went in on the cheap....conservatively....and we're still there.....and there's been nothing cheap about it. Now the aforementioned Senator waves a so-called stimulus bill and smirk-smears. He wants to trim the cost of the bill. If General Sanchez had submitted the bill he would be promptly relieved, but this bill was submitted by the House of Representatives who've proven time and again to generally have no fiscal sense whatsoever. This is not to advocate a stimulus package of any kind since it's my opinion that there will be a need for another, then another, then yet another, and the same people who collect the spoils of such activity will continue to be fattened, but not much will happen, economy-wise, at street level. If you're like me, your mortgage is paid, your bills are current, you save as a routine, your credit is pure, you pay your taxes, you stay out of trouble, and in terms of stimulus, there's nothing for you. If you overspent, underplanned, generally shirked your personal responsibility, then the government seems hell-bent to give you a tax credit while leaving my taxes quite high. But this level of conservative talk has not been engaged as yet. We're no longer about personal responsibility, but rather about entitlement. Thus the anger, the theatrics, the confusion as to what exactly it means to be "conservative". If those who spent themselves into trouble, or those who lent money for a quick buck with no regard to borrower qualifications, or those who securitized those instruments for a quick buck were indeed "conservative", then we'd probably not be in trouble just now. Instead, those who advocate conservativism acted liberally when it profited them, and now those same elements of self-interest are in play as they cheapen a proposed solution that most of us know deep down has no chance of solving anything. Conservative indeed.

2 2 09

So the big shots aren't paying their taxes? And this surprises us? The little guy, after all, is born and bred to pay for the hors-d-oeuvres served by white gloves on the corporate, government, and military jets carrying the offspring and friends of offspring of the well-connected to luxury vacations. Big shots don't pay...they make the rules. They assign themselves the closest parking spots and have an inferior park the limo there. The taxpayer bails out these cretins and the banks lobby to receive taxpayer money to cover their screw-ups....the money earned by minimum-wage maids making up the hotel rooms for the big shots, the guys building stuff in ten degree weather...THOSE are the ones who PAY, and they pay at every level. It's a story as old as the middle ages.

Conversely, it makes free-enterprise sense that any bank or firm that gets itself in trouble by making stupid loans or bad decisions should fail (or succeed) on its own nickel. Let firms that fail with their own money pay themselves bonuses and buy corporate jets. Nobody cares. But if motel-maid-Martha taxpayer bails them out and they congratulate themselves with executive pay and a new jet, even if that so-called bonus is "compensation", then those tax-funds used to prevent failure should be recovered immediately. Company failure is normal in the world of competition. Bail out the fools and the fools will exist for the next round to do foolish things for the same foolish reasons. It'll be painful in the short term. But if we're to have any hope, any chance to balance the budget then pay down (even a little) our HUGE debt which now approaches eleven TRILLION Bush-bucks, we have to get straight with ourselves. We have to realize that the rest of the world not only means us physical harm from time to time, but doesn't give one hoot in hell about our fiscal well-being. We have to look after ourselves. This means coming to terms with energy, with taxes, with science, with business, with spending, with natural resources, with social programs/contrivances, with overblown self-concepts of grand personal deservedness, and with population overload. Harsh, but not nearly as harsh as when the time comes to pay the inevitable piper if we don't address this situation NOW. Unfortunately, we have boobs in the Congress and Senate, still fighting over ideological crumbs, still paying themselves handsomely to wax on as party-partisan-patsies, ever eloquent without ever getting to the point.

Summary.....we're in big trouble. http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

1 28 09

Boehner of Ohio was heard saying that the President doesn't pay any attention to their "ideas". So the new President got into his bullet proof SUV and went to Capital Hill and listened to the Republicans. The Republicans acted very pleased and honored. In eight years, Bush had visited them a total of TWICE. But the next thing we heard was that the Republicans were complaining that the Democrats in the House weren't IMPLEMENTING any of their ideas. At some point, even the new President had to casually mention that the Republicans lost that last election (and to everyone except them they lost it for good reason). One wonders if these crying little babies want perhaps the President to step away in favor of perhaps someone named Bush (pick one..doesn't seem to matter) so that all those wonderful GOP ideas are both heard and implemented, and perhaps all the Democrats in the House might resign and allow Republican Congresspeople to take over. After all, that last eight years under a Republican president worked out so well for all of us. And the mess the Republicans made before American voters in two elections voted their IGNORANT ASSES out of office is to this day draining away the life-blood of the country. And still these IGNORANT ASSES kvetch? Ideas? Get one boys. When you finally do, we'll be listening.

One has to wonder if the Republicans have lost their collective minds. Thank God the adults have finally taken charge.

1 26 09

Whether or not we like it, here's how things work right now. The government hires the IRS to badger you and your employer to be sure they get their percentage of your income as soon as you earn it. But then the tides of fortune change and the banking business starts to look shaky and credit markets freeze up. To stave off political embarrassment and economic disaster, that same government gives hundreds of billions of taxpayer money to banks, including Citibank, with the understanding that those banks will lend money to working folks like you so you can buy things and keep the economy on a paved roadway. But instead of lending, Citibank et al decides, among other things in the news of late, that it needs a fifty million dollar company jet because it wants to make the best use of the time of execs to whom it pays millions per year. You can't easily get a loan, but the execs want what they want when they may justify, even as they use your money to evade dire consequence. This is the legacy of the Bush administration and inherited by the Obama administration. We'll have some idea as to how and if things CAN change at those upper levels of privilege and political connection. Keep in mind that fifty million will keep the American military moving for less than an hour. To you, a person who works and will be lucky to save via your trusty 401k somewhere around 100k to 300k over a working lifetime, fifty million is an enormous amount of money. But to the top two percent of Americans, the ones who get paid the lion's share of American income, the ones who get the tax breaks, the ones who get bailed out when they screw up, fifty million is just another plane parked in the corporate hanger. A million is an office upgrade spent by an unthinking corporate egotist. More is spent for a designer trash-can than paid to the father of four who empties it over a year's time. Our economy is skewed no differently than those periods of history when the regal threw parties in the palace even while suggesting cake-substitute for the unhappy masses. There may be a similar result here in America if this current trend continues.

Keep in mind that nobody cares what legitimate private businesses do with their profits. But when the masses are forced to shore up those profits and the arrogance of privilege continues, there lies danger in the social darkness.

*update: Citibank was shamed into cancelling the order for the fifty million dollar Falcon Corporate jet

1 22 09

Sweet relief. Reports are out that Carl Rove and a plane load of Bush supporters were badmouthing the new President as they flew back to Texas. Seems they don't agree with some of the observations made in the Obama inaugeration speech. Ah well. Goodbye Carl. And now with the adults FINALLY in charge, and before D. C. completely taints and jades what seems to be a perfectly decent and straight thinking family, we hear from the very reason an Obama Presidency was possible in the first place. We hear from the Bloviator.....the cigar-chomping pill-popping hate-monger of AM radio who says he hopes for the failure of this President. That's right. Such a pack of poor losers that the term "loser" doesn't really even cover it. A guy who never served in the military, a guy who makes bundles of money poisoning the minds of people still not onto his hatefulness and....dare I say it.....treason. WHAT? You didn't hear him say it? I realize there may be two of the twenty people or so who actually read my meanderings who actually listen to that fool. But just to appease, CLICK HERE FOR THIS MORON'S PRECISE AUDIO from his lips to your ears. Think how painful it might be for a mother with a son in Iraq to hear this. How horrible it sounds to people who do the working, the dying, the paying, the fighting, the sacrificing no matter who has which office.

Bad losers, bawling Congressmen, bad judgement, and one hell of an economic and civil mess, yet people are hopeful mostly over this particular changing of the guard. That really is the magic of America. And Rush.....what you think matters so little it's stunning anyone at all pays any attention to anything you may have to say at this point. Stunning.

1 16 09

Get off the stage, Mr. Bush. Leave. Now. Your swan song, which few watched on TV, was more like a goose story....a goose sucked into the economic engines of America. You, sir, were that goose. Your little speech self-congratulated for your willingness to make decisions, giving us a choice between no decisions and the exact WRONG decisions. The decider decided for eight long years the exact wrong thing just about every single time on just about every single issue facing America. You've bankrupted the next two generations, and perhaps many more. And here we are deep in debt, deep in deficit, deep in meaningless war, deep in economic decline, deep in world disdain. All due to YOUR ridiculously consistent wrong headed decisions, MR. DECIDER. Go. Leave. Get off the stage, sir. You've done enough damage.

To the OH MY GOD statement by Boehner of Ohio: you sir have for years rubber stamped the above wrong decisions. You put us into war at a billion dollars a week for six years and still we have no outcome nor hope for a positive end, nor is there any apparent advantage to America. You've killed thousand of Americans and hundreds of thousands of others. You've bankrupted America. You were the problem, sir. OH MY GOD. Now that we have some straight thinking adults in place to repair this mess, or at least try, NOW you say OH MY GOD?? To you sir, I say....OH MY GOD.

1 14 09

Bush, the president with the lower-case P, the Idiot President with the upper-case I, is in revisionist mode. Using his typical narrow and fractured language and even narrower view within his now familiar personality, he chooses to be 'disappointed' even as the nation/world pays the price of his wrong headed actions based on wrong headed views over a long and painful eight years. And even in the face of real pain, real economic diminishment, real life-and-death situations for regular people, this Idiot President attempts to spin his tenure positively. Stunning in its hubris. At his hand and design, we're at war, we're in debt, we're in trouble, we're near national impotency, and this guy explains why he couldn't land Air Force One as if there were no other modes of transportation available. He justifies the death of thousands as an intel error not of his making. Incredible. One week to go and we can hope this guy skulks off to Dallas where the Big D can continue living under the illusion of being a Big Deal. One can only hope that not too much taxpayer money is expended to investigate what we already know since no punishment will ever befall this silver-spoon-born baffoon. Happy retirement Mr. Bush. Please keep your mouth shut from here out. Outside of perhaps the Dallas socialites and the giddy-rich, nobody cares about a thing you have to say. You've done quite enough.

1 2 09

Do you ever listen to Click and Clack on Public Radio? They contend that they give "down to earth" advise where automotive issues are concerned. Some pay heed, some don't. Sometimes those MIT trained boys are wrong and they play "stump the chumps" to prove it. But usually they're right. So below, some 'down to earth' thoughts about your money.

By now the really really REALLY bad decisions of the Bush administration has affected you personally, economically-speaking if not worse. Besides the vote, which you may have used unwisely both in the years 2000 and 2004 to place the worst and most unwise administration into office ever, you still have some economic tools at your disposal provided you have the discipline to make use of those tools. The most effective has to do with how you spend earned money. You have the option to refrain from buying anything that any form of government can and will tax on a perpetual basis. Real estate, cars, boats, some investments all are taxed maliciously and without regard to your well-being. 'Government' will throw you out of your house and into the snow to get the last tax dollar from you if you fail to pay certain consumer taxes, such as 'property tax'. That same government will waste those taxes beyond belief, but mostly give it to itself in one form or another as they justify it all to you every election cycle. So if you wish to curtail this, you can choose not to buy those things that are optional in life. Of course you MUST buy or acquire, food, clothing, shelter, and government will surely tax you heavily as you do. But you can choose to buy while only modestly fitting your immediate needs closely and judiciously. A small house on good land kept comfortable by modest energy use. A low-end but reliable car or truck, preferably an old one of low insurance value. And avoid any luxury and optional motorized item such as a motorized boat. Finally, and this should be obvious, stay away from cigarettes, tobacco of any kind, and alcohol. Government loves to tax your bad habits. And when you consider vacation, stay away from commercial shelter when possible, opting instead for camping or rest stops, or even a home-based vacation. Recognize that many people leave their homes to come to exactly where you are now to spend their vacations. So...spend little, maximize every dollar and save every nickel you can, if possible in tax sheltered, federally insured instruments. Stay away from stocks for the moment. Keep in mind that the biggest jump in income taxes is at the low end of your income. Currently, the federal government confiscates ten percent of your adjusted gross income up to $8025. It demands five percent additional from there to $32,550, and then it penalizes a whopping and additional TEN PERCENT up to $78,850 from there. Even the wealthiest of wealthy are not so heavily penalized for income beyond that, shockingly taxed only an additional 2 per cent of all income above $357,700. Two percent! (Don't look at me, YOU voted for these imbiciles.) The point is, arrange to live on income before it's heavily penalized if you can and keep the rest in pre-tax accounts to stay on the low end of the penalty range. Over time, government will shift focus on what it taxes you, not to control consumption, but to fund its own bad habits of wildly spending YOUR assets on their trivial pursuits. At that point you'll have to decide what you can and cannot live without, and perhaps you might even shift your voting habits from your traditional perspective to one that fits the economic times. Otherwise, and this is really the bottom line, know the rules. The rules matter in your life, and they change constantly.

1 1 09

Truth be told, nobody cares at all about Illinois politics. Or Texas politics. Or Ahnald's little money problems. Unless of course it affects us all. And this Blogojevich creep wants to play hardball with the U.S. Senate. And he chose a guy to replace President Elect Obama who sees nothing wrong with putting personal ambition ahead of justice and above-board politics. OK. So be it. Let the games begin. It'll be an interesting test for us who observe such things to learn exactly what kind of backbone the U.S. Senate has left. Will the Senate cave like little girls over synthetics such as charges of racism? Will they resort to little games and rule-man-ship? Or will they bare teeth and tell the Illinois governor that the U.S. Senate is not to be trifled with and that the American people don't need piss-ant Illinois political figures to contribute to the processes that will be necessary over the next few years to move America off of her deathbed? The Bush years are yet to begin to scab over, and this is not the time to be federally timid. Here's hoping the U.S. Senate can find some seed of wisdom within it. Again, my bets are hedged on the matter, but I insist on being hopeful.

12 30 08

Here's one for Jon Stewart. Seems Hamas took Gaza, totally relinquished by Israel so that peace could break out, with which Hamas uses to base terror activity against Israel with rocket fire for eight consecutive years. The international community says little or nothing all that time....let alone plea for an end to the Hama rocket activity. But then, Hamas acquires Iranian rockets of a greater range and fire them into Israel from Gaza regularly. Israel finally decides to take control and end the terrorist rocket fire with it's own military might, and America pleads for peace. America...who is deep into pre-emptive war-making, wants Israel to be peaceful. If Cuba fired missiles into Florida regularly for eight years and America decided to finally do something about it, militarily speaking, I just wonder what position it might take if Canada said, "aw, come on, America...can't you just be peaceful?

America...land of the insane?

12 20 08

On this shoe incident, a quick check of the political cartoon sphere shows a current 1174 political cartoons just on that one issue alone. But the shoe heard round the world has important ramifications to America. Sure, the Iraqi threw the shoe at the idiot president, but was actually throwing that show at America herself. And in my estimation America deserved it. Torture, pre-emptive war, bring-em-on politics destined to break not only America but the world. All led not by one dictatorial idiot president and an equally idiotic vice president, but by the entire mind set, all assembled group-think-style in the form of a recalcitrant, angry GOP hell bent to be at the top of the trickle down pyramid. This, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, the party holding itself out to be fiscally responsible while spending the nation into probable ruin, giving itself accolades and pay-raises along the way, deserves to have that shoe thrown at it, if not worse. Even as I write, the GOP is too dumb to realize the danger of its own actions in terms of killing off a party that perhaps may have at one time had an actual idea. So...to that shoe-throwing Iraqi, thanks from those of us who love America. It was a wake-up call that many of us couldn't seem to get across to the thickest skulls ever to perceive themselves in authority. .

12 09 08

The big economic theme I keep hearing from media these days is "consumer confidence". 'Nothing to fear but fear itself' kinda talk. So let's take a closer look;

Congress controls the federal purse. Congress has taxed every possible dollar away from every possible entity and every possible citizen...and spent it. Congress has borrowed every possible dollar from every possible foreign country....and spent it. Congress has printed ten trillion more dollars than it can back up....and spent every nickel. Congress has promised to pay trillions in Social Security and Medicare benefits to millions of now-retiring baby boomers, but has already spent the contributions on other stuff? Gee whillikers, as Gabby used to say. Why, I wonder, wouldn't people have loads of confidence? Just because of enormous debt, unsustainable and unnecessary pre-emptive war, no energy policy, a stop loss draft, more men's-room shoe-tapping congressional scandal than the news media can possibly feed on for the last eight years, and no confidence? No foolin'? Hard to imagine. Palin sounds like some Right Wing Nazi? Some in Congress want to spend some more on more of the same. Limbaugh continues bleating hatred. Bush doing nothing but feathering a nice Dallas nest for himself and all the little Bushes who've come to enjoy tax paid filet. Gas prices so unsteady that nobody wants to buy a car. GM out of dough, out of ideas and out of time. Hell....I don't see why anyone would have a confidence problem. Do you?

12 08 08

I suggest it's time to update the venerable old game Monopoly. This was a game borne of the Great Depression and marks that real estate and economics moment. Everyone knew what the problem was, everyone knew the solutions. And lots of folks got hurt. The difficulty is that economies don't respond just because you know the fix. Those with money want to keep it. Those without money want to get it. Those in debt want out. Those holding debt want to be paid. Etc. Stalemate.

At any rate, if a NEW Monopoly gameboard is to be issued, there'll have to be some relevent additions to factors influencing who wins and who loses the big game. For example, short-term-profit-oriented CEO's surrounded by yes-men, Presidents entrenched in foolhardy religious notions, Idiot Congress takes country to war over a known trumped-up reason but did it anyway because a holiday was coming up and they wanted to get home and campaign. Government bailouts. Government checks for nothing. Government stimulous that stimulates inflation. Kellog Brown Root wins no-bid cost-plus contract for trillions. Government tripples debt. Money being printed so fast it can't be physically printed but has to materialize via electronic issuance. Idiot Congress hands Idiot Treasury Chairman a trillion tax-bucks and passes it out to his pals. Interest rates at zero, but only Treasury pals can borrow at that rate. Inflation at ten percent. Debt at ten trillion. President has IQ of ten. Ten days until auto industry defaults. Lots of pessimism. Boardwalk and Parkplace rot in disrepair. Baltic avenue is crowded, has no heat and is sixty days late paying its mortgage. Not enough Go-Directly-To-Jail cards. There is no GO thus no two hundred dollars. B and O railroad runs out of diesel. OPEC becomes world pusher of choice. Iran tests nuclear device. Military refuses to admit that stop-loss is a draft. Military kills thousands. Military touts volunteer service. Women scream for equal pay. Women scream against drafting women in the military for combat jobs. Dupont closes its doors. Wal-Mart is last retailer standing.

Yikes. We're going to need a bigger gameboard.

11 30 08

This video pretty much sums up the whole of our fiscal matter; http://www.iousathemovie.com/

11 23 08

Amazing, don't you think? The country and the world both hanging back, ticking away time, making pronouncements that hope it's not too late when the Obama team finally takes the helm and begins bailing out the ship of state, scraping the rust and painting the bulkheads. Still, you hear the die hard right wing singing the same song, the same words, the same ideas, the same politically dead stuff suggesting they will continue to snarl the situation up if they don't get their way, as if the eight years they took to allow the ship of state to nearly sink of its own rust and neglect isn't proof enough of their failures. It's inconceivable that otherwise intelligent people can't see beyond their own wallets....fattened by paper taken from the masses no differently than the middle ages. They see themselves as entitled because they "worked for it" in their minds, even though what that really mean is that they were in position to game the system to extract wealth from it....the banking system, the insurance system, the health system, the auto system, the energy system...name any system and I'll show you a gamed system which favored the exact voices now objecting to the screaming percentage of the population underwater, refusing to drown just to allow a top percentage to continue an unworkable and totally self-serving system. Money is paper. It has no value beyond what others will allow for it. It's not worth gold. It can't be used for fertilizer. It represents the psychological health of those who will use it as a store of value. And those who think such a psychology works with a high percentage of the population drowning in an obviously gamed system have had their latest day. It's almost over. The bad news is that these fools seem resilient, and their antiquated notions seem to keep coming up in a destructively cyclical way. Let's hope we can get meaningfully innovative between now and when the next spate of Robber-Barron system-gaming takes yet another toll on the American experiment.

11 20 08

In the early 90's a CEO of a major auto company, General Motors, produced an electric vehicle called the EV1. It leased these cars to people who were totally happy zipping around the California traffic in their EV1, plugging them up and charging them at night. Movie stars leased them. Regular people leased them. There were hundreds of happy customers. A very high percentage of those drivers were well served for the term of the lease. When the lease ran out, the CEO of GM ordered the cars be returned and the lease program was ended. The drivers protested loudly. They picketed for a reversal and raised eleven million dollars privately to buy outright these cars directly from GM. But the CEO of GM ignored these consumers. He was deaf to the customer input concerning his product and collected them even as they protested in front of movie cameras. Once collected, he crushed every one them up into tiny little metal pieces. He had no interest in what his customers wanted. Almost two decades later, this same CEO of GM flew into Washington on his 35 million dollar private jet. He wanted these same customers to lend him 25 billion dollars because his business was bad for some reason. Seems people weren't buying his products enough to keep GM in business and he wanted a loan. Seems the Japanese were selling electrically driven cars and cutting into his business. It didn't seem to occur to him as he made his case to a somewhat hostile Congressional Committee that when he crushed those little EV1 electric cars up, he also crushed up GM. After all, the customer is ALWAYS right. Eventually. When asked about it, the CEO of GM said he'd made a mistake. Then he got back on his private jet which took him to his limo which took him luxuriously to his mansion where he ate a really nice dinner. He's now waiting to see if he gets his 25 billion dollars.

11 13 08

Gollee wheeeee.....it's been on my mind and maybe yours too. So let's get this out. For years I struggled to pay off my mortgage. Auto loans too. And any other loan I may have personally contracted. Nobody ever came to "adjust" a single one of them for me. I did without to pay my debts. I did what I had to do to make good on any and all contracts I entered into. I worked, paid, did the best I could. There were several "recessions" along the way (I'm almost sixty now) but that didn't matter to those to whom my debts were due. They wanted to be paid. They trusted me. So pay I did. Always on time and always the amount expected. Finally, house was paid, debts were retired, and I was able to save a little for a rainy day. Now that it's raining, the government, the same entity that every April shakes me down as seriously as it possibly can dare, wants to take some of our tax money and give it to those who can't quite live up to their obligations, even though gov can't live up to their own (unless they just print themselves up some cash, which they've done now to the tune of ten trillion). Those who get my money because they just couldn't quite manage, seem to be giving themselves millions in bonuses lately. They've been going on corporate retreats and congratulating themselves even as they get in line to the federal window again for yet more public money. Even the car companies who for decades now have been too DUMB to build cars that can compete in the world, wants "relief". The CEO of GM owns two private jets, two helicopters, takes home millions from his failing company, but his giant company that can't is going to be begging for public money. This is me....going on record now....saying that bailing these fools out, or any other fool who takes a risk for the sake of personal profit and loses, is just plain bad economics. It guarantees that America will remain non competitive, and it guarantees that we'll just keep on getting more of the same. It guarantees stupidity. But then again, isn't that what we've been buying over the last several years? Stupidity?

11 12 08

The headlines today suggest Sarah Palin will address theAssociation of Republican governors in Miami. If I were a Democrat, which I am not given my middle-of-the-road, thus moderate and sane political view, I would offer to personally pay Palin's future filing fees to keep her in the game and keep her spouting platitudes in the name of the Republicans. As long as a moron like this serves as point-person for the Republicans, the GOP will endure the freezing cold of a dwindling national status. Voters aren't stupid and recognize political vowel-vomit when they hear it. However I'm not that fond of either party and would thus like to request that something be done to shut this moron up long enough for adults to address the very real, and perhaps life threatening issues that need to be dealt with at our highest levels of leadership. We have a small chance, and perhaps only one chance, to address pressing issues of economy, energy, world stature, war etc. and to have a fool like this with a megaphone on the sidelines is counterproductive to adult activities being discussed on behalf of the American populace.

11 11 08

I've been thinking about this for a long time. Not weeks, not months, but years. The evidence, including the growingly frantic commentary of those who've been involved in economy, have more and more convinced me that we're now historic witnesses to the beginning of an extended period of the systematic lowering of the American standard of living. Now before any bellowing "I told you so", this has nothing to do with the '08 Presidential election. This has to do with American reality of resource availability and her population's consumption habits. The gas of Texas and Oklahoma is mostly burned up. Gone. We have a very short domestic supply with a very heavy domestic demand. Up until now, we've used credit, both personally and federally, to keep on spending (money we don't have but hope to get our hands on later) for energy we buy from others. Whether that energy is used wisely or not. Now, our credit card is maxed out. GM has been building big gas-consuming vehicles because the sales of those vehicles gave them the greatest profit per sale. (Usually paid for at the final sale by borrowed money.) GM put the health care and feeding of tens of thousands of workers (auto-worker retirees) on their corporate credit card. Again....approaching a point of being corporately maxed out. GM stock fell from 52 to 3 this week. Ford is in similar straights. Want medical attention? Guess what. More money. Want dental? More money. Want fuel, food, a loan, an airplane ticket? More money. Name something and chances are good....it costs more. But....how's that income doing? Want more money yourself? What are you selling? Could it be that typing out things on your keyboard does little or nothing to add to the wealth of the nation? Does the "information revolution" have much value where you are? But you burn a few gallons of gas daily to go do it, mightn't you? Meanwhile, coming up on eleven trillion in Federal debt, a trillion dollar deficit, and all sorts of post election groups are grabbing at the incoming admistration's shirt-sleeve for all kinds of what we now euphamistically calling 'bridges to nowhere', each with a compelling reason why that particular project or this is absolutely worth public funding. All this, plus wars on two fronts. Fiscal insanity.

So....federal "stimulating" aside, guess who'll pay? Shall we discuss the possibility of 65% taxes on average? In my case on this very day, we observe on average a 25% federal income tax rate, a 6% state income tax, a 6% sales tax, 4% property tax, 18% payrol taxes (including Social Security, Medicare, et al), 1% ad valorem tax. We'll not include any city taxes, gas tax, or special use taxes such as tolls etc. So this moment we directly pay on average 40 percent of our personal resources toward one tax or another. Is it such a leap to consider that taxpayers will have to pay more to get the federal debt down...or at the very least pay the interest on what we've already borrowed....just to buy some time? The debt now is computed to be around $34,800.00 per man, woman, and child in America today. http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ And, if what we're currently taxed doesn't cover roads, bridges, infrastructure in general, can we find a way to pay for what we need without expecting heavier taxes? Plus expanded socially engineered medicine for all? Answer is, no.

My guess is we can't stand much more without a lot more fallout in terms of foreclosure, homelessness, social unrest. This means, lower standard of living. It means learning to pay attention to our personal fiscal responsibilities....having some idea how much more it cost to run a dishwasher, or even own one. It means choosing between living in 64 degree controlled household heat or perhaps Cub Scout fees for the kids. It means pulling in the extavagance no matter how convincing the TV screams at you to consume...no matter how convinced you are that you deserve to live like a movie star. And scream it will. The folks at the high end trying to sell you a mortgage, or fast food, or upgraded cell phone service, are not used to doing without and they've shown they'll spend their last million to maintain their own social standing if they can. Especially if that last million is bailout money coming from....uh......you.

11 8 08

Now, some tough choices with a little background. If you ever saw Roger and Me, or Who Killed the Electric Car, both movies focusing on the obstinance and totally idiotic greed of General Motors, you wonder aloud lately why on earth we even consider not allowing this rotten company to die. At a time when GM actually had a prototype of an electric vehicle on the roads in California, the EV1 leased only, GM chose to collect those cars and crush them up even as owners banded together to raise enough money to save them. COLLECTED THEM and CRUSHED THEM UP. An ELECTRIC VEHICLE that suited drivers and enviornment in the early nineties. GM was totally tone deaf. Totally moronic. And now, after the added insult of the years GM produced Vega, these very same companies want us to be magnanimous and give them billions so they can continue making cars that don't fit the nation's moment. This very day, the head of the company has two private jets, a couple of helicopters, doesn't believe in global atmospheric changes resulting from fossil fuel burning, but he does believe that we should give him billions to keep his overpaid job. The problem? Again, a 'too big to fail' issue. If GM goes down, Ford likely to follow, all the suppliers of all the little services and pieces that go into making these cars and trucks that nobody seems to be currently buying (or able to buy) will go down with the corporate ship. We're looking at three million job losses. During the great depression unemployment went to twenty six percent. Right now we are at 6.5 and rising. We finally are assured to rid ourselves of the worst political leadership in our nation's history replaced with a clear thinking black president already prudently aligned to reverse some two hundred truly rotten and couterproductive Bush policies. While those of us with some sense of clarity are holding our breath to see if it's too late to save the nation, given our debt, our deficit, our outright idiotic notion of ourselves as a nation seeming to care more about tangential issues before we get our fiscal house in order, Washington continues to mostly do nothing but spend money, whittling down to even less the resources (and military) we may have to attempt to preserve the nation once we rid ourselves of the very obstinance that forces GM et al to come begging.. Even a few weeks has become crucial in terms of getting the fiscal wheels of the American experiment back on some sort of level track. Meanwhile, GM wants a few billion borrowed bucks to tide them over for a few weeks. Whether or not to oblige......a true delimma.

11 6 08

Post election thoughts. We can feel and hear the national sigh of relief and certainly we see the emotion.. It's like having finally patched the hull to the point where we may have SOME hope that the water being pumped out equals the amount of water leaking into the ship of state. Naturally the GOP is asking itself what went wrong, and the fact it even asks is a major step for them. Up to now they haven't bothered to ask anybody anything. Only now, when all is lost to them, can they repent at their leisure. Things may soon be as obvious to them as have been to the rest of us that the GOP will not emerge beligerant again for quite awhile....at least until the NEXT iteration of the cyclical Robber Barron phenom. For the rest of us we can't say we can fix all the damage done, but at least we can see a hope for the end of the Tom-Delay-esque bickering such that attention can be turned to the enormous problems we face. Maybe we can turn the monetary system upright. Perhaps we can lure the world to our doorstep as equal global members. Hopefully we can recover the DEFENSIVE posture of our defense mechanisms. Maybe we can get our energy needs on a workable long term track, which all by itself will enormously effect economy, industry, trade. At long long last.

11 3 08

There's been discussion on one party rule. The argument is that checks and balances will be out of ...well....out of balance if the Democrats control the House, Senate AND the Executive office. It's a good argument. The problem is that the voter hasn't been heard. In the 2006 elections, voters made it very very VERY clear to the GOP, at the time throwing the house to the Dems by removing an historic number of seats by mid-term election. There was plenty of press about this spanking. Representatives of the Republicans said publically that they took a "whipping". But nothing changed. Not one damned thing. The White House went right on with its wrong headedness. The Congress went ahead with contentious bickering and aisle blocking.. The "government" continued to spend like drunken Congressmen. So....a new message is obviously in order. This is one time when the spanking evidently needs to be quite a bit more severe. The GOP will likely be in the dark for many many cycles. All it had to do was listen to find equilibrium in 2006. It did not. My guess, even after the spanking that will be doled out on Tuesday, the Grahams, the Liebermans, the McCains will still be deaf to the voice of the people. But they'll be deaf with no authority. To me, it's the ultimate check and balance. The voter checks, the representative balances.

11 1 08

As the opportunity to vote approaches, here is a visual reminder of how the world, as seen through the eyes of The Daily Mirror, saw our last election;

10 26 08

With one more chance....maybe.....to get it right, and having blown the last two elections, it might be well for us to review where we are and how we got there. First, the President has two tools....the bully pulpit and the veto pen. (He or she also replaces Justices, but we'll save that for later.) Mr. Bush has used both of these tools to;

take us to war based on a (false) report of WMD in Iraq even as investigators objected

more than doubled our national debt to a now grand total of over ten trillion dollars

doubled the deficit by adding government spending which contributes to that debt

ruin the WORLD economy based on a notion that people in charge of the American monetary systems don't need regulation

angered the world with some sort of unilateral BRING IT ON approach to life

stopped meaningful research in several areas because of his particular brand of southern fried religious dogma

tortured people

emplaced spy mechanisms on his own country, calling it the Act of a Patriot

failed in every sense of the word possible taking his disapproval polls to all time record lows and leaving America one hell of a mess.

In this writer's opinion, the GOP, John McCain, and anyone seeing anything good as a result of eight years under such a beligerant, self indulgent, foolish, war making administration should take a moment to reflect. After all, the above is exactly what the majority voted for. Why they might want this particular track continues to mystify me even as I listen to the hollow arguments for continuation of that dysfunctional course. Even as the polls indicate the unpopularity of the Administrative and Legislative branches,there seems to be plenty of argument made for a general 'more-of-the-same' platform. It's more than a little difficult to understand.

10 15 08

Here's a pre-postmortem on why McCain lost the election. (Brave of me? Not really.) McCain has no workable and topical ideas. He's persistently two weeks behind the curve. McCain does not understand economics at street level. McCain talks down even to his own supporters. McCain doesn't walk his own walk. He thinks he's at a high school debate and that's why you see him smirk when he makes those ridiculous assertions, most of which he fully KNOWS he cannot produce. McCain shows bad judgment. He chose the very dumbest, least likely, least capable successor possible from a field of highly qualified Republicans, and it appears he chose her just by virtue of her looks. McCain is mean spirited, and he comes across very much that way in his campaigning. McCain has a temper, and everybody now knows it. McCain is pro-war even as his nation's treasury is totally drained, and even as our debt piles skyward toward eleven trillion. McCain doesn't convince, with the tenor of his delivery, anyone that he believes his own rhetoric. McCain keeps himself surrounded by dogmatic and illogical company (Lieberman, Graham, et al). And even if you support to the last word every ideological morsel offered by the conservatives, the evidence of the practice of that ideology is quite painful right now in the form of economics, and maybe even an end to the American experiment in old style capitalism, or God forbid even the demise of our monetary system. Even the dumbest of the dumb has to take some note of how this is adversely affecting us all. So, debates, speeches, erratic direction changes, empty promises, threats, scare-tactics all considered, McCain is headed to the dust bin of the also-ran. The one record he may set is the widening spread by which he will lose the contest both in popular and electoral college vote. So, tell us how you'll catch Bin Laden, Mr. McCain, since you've asserted you alone know how. Then, back to the Senate with your cronies. Enjoy that blonde wife, those houses and cars, and the peace of a night's sleep. You were no help, and we really won't miss you very much.

10 11 08

Get it yet? Did it take a war, then a market crash, then a week or two of talk shows to give you your opinion, then after the chanting of your favorite right wing Presidential candidate left your lips it started to occur to you that perhaps that little but growing voice in the back of your mind was right all along. Dumb people are quick to pick up the most current chant and are slow to listen to their own little voice. But now that the little voice has become a SCREAM saying "THEY MAY NOT HAVE BEEN TRUTHFUL", it's too late. The President got you into a war over an obvious lie. The administration doubled your debt but called it a tax cut. Mortgage companies might have your name on the dotted line following a hundred pages filled with six point type, all while telling you orally that things would be alright.....later. Businesses have been fudging their reports while paying themselves billions, but you chanted away happily. You had faith. You were comfortable in your oblivious, glassy eyed faith. It's what you do. Ah well. Finally, "they" (the ones you voted into office) picked your pocket for another trillion or two while they led you in another chorus of their favorite chanting....all in the name of "fixing it". Down came the house made of lies..... right before your eyes. Strangely, on any day you see the hoards of stupid people, now slowly moving toward angry, still standing in the background near their fuel happy SUV's, standing near one of the candidate perhaps, standing by that foreclosure sign, still chanting as the lies spew, perhaps waving a sign that shows just exactly HOW stupid they really are. The dumming down of America. The total dilution of American spirit. A sad thing to have to watch.

Let me offer this consolation: if you're one of those stupid people (and you no doubt THINK you're smart, so be careful here)...... if you could turn back the clock, you'd do everything precisely and exactly the same way. After all, it's more a function of intellectual laziness than anything else. And until that fact starts to change, until the lesson is obvious (AGAIN) to even the stupid, well, with tribute to Dillon and our founding fathers......the times...they're going to be continuously a-changin'.

10 8 08

By now it probably is slowing sinking in that the trillion your Congressional representative just spent, putting it on the ol' Federal Debt of course, isn't going to solve the current problem very quickly, if at all. You see, we've been here before. The Robber Barron Period is a very well-studied period of American history where a few people owned just about EVERYTHING while everyone else worked for just enough to survive. The Trusts, as they were known, owned the politicians, the police, the land, the resources, the means of production and the systems that, oddly enough, continually advantaged life to the way of the privileged. ("The public be damned", cried railroad big-shot Cornelius Vanderbilt.....and such was the general social sentiment). Such is the case today with the added wrinkle that the John Rockefellers et al in that whole scenario is being played by non-American interests. Odd that those interests would pay little attention to the health of their customer, but then an argument can be made that their customer base for energy and raw materials is shifting toward Asia. This time around, it appears the outcome will be somewhat milder than the post trust (anti-trust) period. The fix? Well....suffice to say that people don't surrender their own sense of importance very easily, and a catastrophe affecting the upper crust is about the only medicine that seems to have any hopeful meaning. A down market, by the way, is not a catastrophe. A few foreclosed homes is not a catastrophe. Obvious social disruption with a threat of danger is a symtom of a coming catastrophe. Let's just hope we don't ruin the monetary system and return to the dark ages (another period of history where a few self-appointed "lords" owned everything via their own sense of entitlement and connection, and everyone who wanted to survive paid them tribute.)

Laws are like spider webs.....if some poor weak creature comes up against them, it's caught. But the bigger ones can break through and get away. (Solon. 555BC)

10 1 08

I would like to buy a Chevrolet for six percent less that it costs to build. Let me explain.

When I lend money to a bank by depositing to any savings instrument, I get six percent less value back annually than the original amount deposited....and to add insult to this, the government taxes me for any interest earned. The loss, of course, is the inflation incurred over the time the money was not available to me. The Fed is addicted to providing money to business for less than it costs to borrow it. It holds rates down artificially to inpsire business activity. Now that those with money to lend don't want to lend it (credit freeze), at least at a loss (understandable) the Fed wants Congress to allow the Treasury to print a trillion or so and GIVE it to the banks to lend at low rates (credit freed), so that business can continue to borrow at less than it costs to provide. This of course will lead to a vicious cycle, but nobody seems concerned about this at this point. The Congress is kinda dumb and will provide this printed-up money to "free up credit". But if you have any money loaned to a savings account, YOU will be providing the cost in the loss of value to the funds you're lending. This is why the gold markets are responding upwards, why the price-spiral is sure to again be a factor in American politics, and why you don't hear anyone speaking of it fearing the very mention might re-awaken the price-spiral monster. The monster, by the way, has one eye opening.

Money is a commodity, and it has a price no different than gold, pork bellies or Chevrolets. The cost of money will have to go up. If it doesn't, money, like my under-cost Chevrolet, just won't be made available unless the Congress is dumb enough to keep printing money each time the last trillion runs out. For now, it appears Congress is EXACTLY that dumb.

9 28 09

The header of this blog suggests "truth". Here's some; Many moons ago I was a small businessman. Back then "small" meant five million per year gross sales or less. The longer I managed to stay in business, the more government latched on. There was state income tax, state sales tax, state corporate tax, city license, city tax, unemployment tax, Social Security matching, federal income tax, federal corporate tax. county business tax, county license, among a few minor other palms to grease. And of course there was a parade of people forever soliciting assistance....a kind of community tax one pays in business to keep good the will of the natives. At some point a few years in, it was apparent that my margins were getting very thin and I was the last to earn anything even though I took all the risks. There were some months where profit was a mathmatical impossibility given the ever growing tax burdens. Out of concern, I asked a business cohort, a private jeweler in the town named Joe D***, how anyone can do do this. His answer was quick and in one word. CHEAT. That's right. A guy has to cheat to make anything from his efforts....and this was in 1979. Ultimately I sold everything off I possibly could and eventually got on the other side of the tax issue. First, the collecting side with Treasury, then the spending side with DOD and VA. And man, did those entities know how to spend. BILLIONS. That's a life's perspective most people don't have. And I absolutely know that the advice my cohort gave back then is in full spirit today. People just have to cheat. There's no alternative. Government is too stupid, too big, too self important to have any clue about real matters, and to make matters worse, those who cheat are probably also stoned. Not really a far throw from cheating to breaking more and more ever spewing chicken shit laws from chicken shit people in self important political jobs. This very day, Georgians can't buy gas. There's none to buy. Not long ago chicken shit Georgia lawmakers made it illegal to sell a certain blend of gas during certain times of the year. The chicken shit legislators were, as always, protecting us from 'ourselves' (if you're old enough to recall Pogo). A slight disruption like a hurricane a thousand miles away and presto....no gas. Now the chicken shits who made the law propose to suspend their own stupid, chicken shit laws long enough to gas up their taxpayer paid SUV's. And so it goes at the federal level where chicken shit law makers who have no connection to real life, force working people to cheat even more to survive. It's not a far throw to go from there to borrowing more money that one can repay, then when things turn down, go get stoned, drunk, etc. and forget about those worries. And when done en masse, it forces the chicken shit administrators to pass yet more chicken shit laws that will likely cost even more to the working stiff who will have to cheat even more just to get by. What a way to run a country. I sent letters to a few Congress types expressing that a bailout of a trillion bucks was not going to work and was socialism at its base. Some responded in agreement, and of course the news was almost immediate that a chicken shit bailout was happening. So....more chicken shit, more law, more cost, forcing more cheating by those who have to pay. A cycle that probably cannot be broken, given the chicken shit nature of people.

How's THAT for truth? And I truly apologize for the heavy use of the explitive in this entry, but there's just no other way to communicate the frustration.

To get to a big picture, we have to focus on the big picture. Energy conservation. Alternative energy. Electric infrastructure. Jobs and education focusing on infrastructure and energy. And a realization that producing more babies to consume more resources that have to be imported is probably not in our best interest just now. We have to get away from chicken sh..... well...you know. We have to be wise. And each of us has to be acutely aware of the direction a so-called leader wants to go. War is the wrong direction. JHyper-consumption (especially of an imported nature) is the wrong direction. Borrowing money is the wrong direction. Oil importation is the wrong direction. It doesn't matter if a person is a war hero if there's no surviving society to honor them. We have to focus on the big picture, no matter how small a part we play in it. It's time. It's basically now or never.

9 23, 08

And the fools disparage the good name of Jimmy Carter? Wow.

Just in case this whole economic situation is beyond your grasp, here's a simple corollary....since we've been here before. The first time was a period when regular working stiffs could put a hundred dollars down and LEVERAGE a thousand dollars worth of stocks. And as long as stocks rose in value, the equity of those stocks was enough to keep the leverage on the profit side where the buyer was concerned. But when those stocks fell, and fall they did, a margin call that the normal working stiff could not pay forced him into a sell position. And so it is with real estate today. The value of houses have fallen in the aggregate below the amount financed. And many buyers bought often with NOTHING down....total leverage, total faith that home prices would rise forever. With no money available to keep the bubble pumped up, that is, new buyers offering more for those homes that the original buyer paid, house sales have gone into fire sale (foreclosure) mode. No money available. No sales. No sales, value drops even more. Meanwhile, all those mortgages became the object of derived (derivative) values. They were packaged up and sold to foreign markets as secured packages....secured by these very mortgages. These packages themselves were levereged. The same vicious circle as the margin call of that samely depressed era in the late twenties. The depression went on for a decade. In fact, all the government assistance that went on post Hoover (Hoover believed in a hands-off posture...a true free economy) and even under all the Roosevelt schemes, government programs did less for the rise of American prospects than the war profits of WWII. When money (federal money extracted every way possible from the people in the name of war) began flowing to pay for tanks, planes, bullets etc, people found work. People working is people buying is money flowing.

So NOW....there's little question the "government" (which means the people will pay) will step in to attempt to stop a down cycle. The big question is who will benefit from the mind blowing amounts of federal money being bantered about...who will get it? You? No way. Not unless you've already gamed the financial system and have your spoils safely in hand. The answer is....the lending systems that made loans to people who couldn't repay in the first place. You see, current administration geniuses want the money to flow, so people can work, so people can buy, so money can flow. The trouble is that the very people to whom they will have to lend further funds, this same trillion or so that will be printed on one side of the ledger (inflation!!!) and added to the debt on the other (interest rate rise!!!) are the very derelicts that borrowed injudiciously in the first place. So...the plan will not likely work in the short term unless you start the cycle all over again. The only positive thing that can be said is that it might keep masses of people from losing their heads and attempting to convert their dollars into something else (gold, art, euros) then hunker down to wait till the warning sirens stop peeling for imminent meltdown.

There is some good news. Unlike the depression of the twenties and thirties where the value of stocks was purely paper value, thus easily vaporized, a home has the value of being shelter for somebody. And that valueis what one can only hope is what our government proposes to acquire....not the home, but the right to collect the mortgage payments from the user of that property as shelter. The bad news is the government is not going to buy the GOOD mortgages.....it proposes to buy the TOXIC ones...those which are foreclosed or are in danger of foreclosure. But ..... the home itself still has more value than just a paper valuation.

Sep 20, 08

This time YOU get to be the dead body. Let me explain. The fool who occupies the Whitehouse, and the fools who ascribe to anything Bush, are all in panic mode again. The last time this happened (under Bush), they traded in the name and credibility of all things GOP and convinced Congress that WMD in Iraq was a compelling, later proven untrue reason to impose the Bush Doctrine. For any VP selectees out there, this means a pre-emptive attack...an offensive war move by a nation with a DEFENSE (not offense) Department.. The Bush Doctrine is basically; "do it to them before they do it to you". But Congress, being a collection of not-very-bright guys and gals, gave the Prez authority to procede the ruination process of America via Iraq, and thus he proceeded to do just that. And what the hell...the Americans who die in such a situation would be SOMEBODY ELSE. So no big deal where YOU'RE concerned. But now this new panic, the economic panic, the big panic on Wall Street where big, connected fat boys have collected billions and pissed it all away on the great roullette wheel called generally "The Markets" whilst keeping a few millions for themselves of course. These guys managed to get away rich, but for the rest of us? Well, now they want YOU, the taxpayer, to pony up to stablize the markets they screwed over even as they golden-parachute their way to enjoy their mansions on Martha's Vineyard. So beginning immediately, YOU will owe an additional $3500, as will your wife and each kid, tacked onto the $31000 each of you owe in terms of the ongoing and growing national debt. Congratulations. YOU get to pay. You get to be the 'dead body'.

Oversimplied you argue? Not that simple? Then you should vote McCain. He'll continue the Bush underlying logic of all things politically economic, and given the current stirrings, coupled with eight years of one disaster after another, I think you deserve exactly what your vote will yield.

Sept 18, 08

I woke up this morning in the insurance business. I've been in the mortgage business for a couple of weeks now. I expect I'll be in the auto manufacturing business and perhaps the airline business soon. No telling how long I've been in the oil business. Problem is, I only get to participate when there are losses. When there are profits, they only go to a select few, and they're very generous to themselves along those lines. Millions in salaries to oversee businesses that, when driven to disaster, become my problem. Not just my problem of course. Yours too, if you pay taxes. Thus profits are privatized and losses are socialized. And as always, I'm on the paying end of that equation. I'd like for someone to tell me how this system differs from communism or socialism. Don't those systems reward handsomely those who make the rules and disperse rewards of work thinly to those who actually do the work? And speaking of work, why is it that the shufflers of paper have become so instrumental in the value of the American economy? Is that all we have to sell these days? Do we only have contrived financial devices, derivitives, stocks that evaporate when trouble surfaces? Shouldn't we be HIGHLY concerned that the value of money will evaporate in the same way as federal printing presses pour out money to cover these bad decisions? Mark the date above. I think it may be a watershed date in terms of a shift in the value of American financial characteristics. And YOU get to be a socialized participant. But then, we are a democracy, and this is what the majority voted for.

Sep 17, 2008

AIG this time. The FED printed up eighty five billion dollars worth of money and bailed out an insurance company. Don't you wish you could start up a company, pay yourself millions, and when youir company cash ran out, the government, itself ten trillion in debt, just bails you out (or is it twenty trillion now that it assumed the debt of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? hard to tell where we are any more) . Too big too fail? Or too influential? Or too connected? Or??

Let's decide...are we socialists or are we capitalists? I've lost my own relatively tiny fortune more than once trying to maintain a business while sending over half my income to various taxing entities. To this day I have to send money to taxing entities or they'll take my house and make me homeless. They raise those taxes against my home even as the value of my home falls. THEY, after all, is what's important. Not ME. And this at a time when somewhere around eleven percent of homes in America are theoretically empty. Foreclosed. Bankrupt. But tax they do, and tax they will. At all levels. Doesn't matter who wins the Prez. They have no choice. Ten trillion in debt, a trillion a year in deficit, a monetary system overseen by morons, trickling down to nobody, run by goons, and no gas. All this our reality...and the dialogue is about lipstick. I'd cry, but I'm all out of tears.

Sep 15, 2008

Seems obvious to me. If you have the nerve to question your chief executive...if you see no need of discussion of issues but rather just need an update on how bad things are based on administrative inaction. If you want more war, more debt, more economic disaster, more sandbagging, more elitism, more global isolation, and no direction in energy, environment, industry or healthcare....McCain's your guy. And I just have to say that, if the polls are correct (and I highly doubt them), if half the country is actually going for a bad tempered old man with poor judgment and an eye for the pretty girls, then the United States as I knew it is dead and the experiment is over. If a voter is stupid enough to think that a son-of-an-Admiral (also the son-of-an-Admiral) Senator of 27 years is actually going to make any change at all meaningful to the middle class, provided there's a middle class left at the time of inauguration, then these elections mean as much as any other third world country where the ballot box accepts votes only for the one ill-tempered elitist who's decided who can and must be elected (always himself). The Putins et al of this world have nothing on the NEW America. And with all the goings-on of America today....fiscal abuse, monetary meltdown, war, and foolish foolish foolish BRING-EM-ON insiders who can see Russia from their front porches, if ever there was a time to hash issues out in straight-talk fashion, now is it. Why do we not hear those conversations? Answer; the mentality of insiders as represented by John McCain.

Sep 2, 2008

I find it stunningly interesting that even with the latest evidence of McCain's impetuous nature, along with his typically intemperate responses resulting from reactions to his own marginal-to-bad decisions, people still rally behind the continuation of what truly is a more-of-the-same candidate. I suppose it has to be a pure bread/butter issue. That is, if your bread is buttered on the conservative side, it doesn't really matter who represents you in the executive office as long as he or she is a member of the conservative club. Meanwhile, a true and gentle visionary may have appeared in the personality of B. Obama. And following an acknowledged well-orchestrated Democratic convention, even as the GOP on its third convention day has yet to get something going, it seems to this humble Bush antagonist that what's good for the country is not John McCain nor Ms. Palin of Alaska. And those of us who are not party affiliated but rather vote for ideas and directions that may actually assist America in her continued exalted experiment, are forever if not slightly cynically on the lookout for that which might best secure our country and consequently our own existence.

July 30 2008

Economics USA. Of course the rules are different depending on who you are and how much you earn. But generally the various tax entities of state, local and federal, not counting the mandated expenses incurred by those entities such as required insurances, property taxes, sales taxes, licenses, ad valorem, user fees etc. costs the average guy forty to fifty percent of all income. Thus the income it takes to support himself and those attached to him has to come from the marketplace. The goverments that tax him make high minded rules which makes that ever more difficult. And governments that tax him make rules which advantages others, perhaps even foreign nationals, over him. Governments that tax him give lavish perks to themselves such as helicopters for idiot Presidents They sometimes start pointless wars (four years of my life was dedicated to that activity). They levy taxes against him to pay for medicines and healthcare for select other groups in which he is no member. They bus children to schools at his expense even though he may have no children. When the economy turns down, and when the fuel of economy gets expensive, goverments find their own income stream diminished, so to compensate their loss, governments raise levies against him to assure their income so they can continue making rules and receiving perks that slow the very economic system in which citizens must try to find incomes to survive. The only time governments seem to notice, much less take any action, that citizens have a bad time is when they want something....usually a vote. Otherwise, governments just run up the bill for future schmos to pay on the cuff....if they can. To them, as long as their helicopters fly.... their Alaska homes are well insulated.... their steaks are rare, what the hell.

July 22. 2008

At large again, T. Boone Pickens. Here's a fellow who tries to make sense and not excuses. "Get all the oil", he says. California burns oil like the stuff grows on trees, but movie star governors don't want any ugly rigs off his shore. No sir. Not Cawleefawnya. He just wants to drive his Hummer on somebody else's nickel, like every other Californian. Same with Florida. The Floridians love to drive and enjoy (and sell) their beaches. But somebody else has to foul their landscape so they can continue to do just that down there where the elderly go to expire. And T. Boone says oil isn't the only energy source we have to tap. He wants to tap the wind. Except that HE doesn't want any of those ugly propellers on HIS ranch in Texas. "Too ugly", he says. Ah well. Heroes come and go. But the REAL answer is mother earth. Below our very feet the heat of hell rises just twenty miles beneath. Closer in some places. Up here, we live our little lives as bio-hair. We whine about our little problems living on the cooled pudding-skin of the surface of hell fire itself. Are we morons? Or perhaps those who own the rest of the world's oil just want the money they can sell it for before we move on to something a bit more practical? Perhaps T. Boone is selling too. Clever of him to claim the wind. So the question, heroes aside: Are we concerned with money? or are we concerned with energy? Seems it might be time for a showdown. Again. If I were a betting man, I'd go all in on the money.

July 19, 2008

The idea killers. America is a veritable primordial soup of ideas. Good ones, bad ones, stupid ones, hugely useful ones. But an idea unresearched is just a passing moment...a thought in a mind usually focused on survival, sex, lunch. And never has America been in need of ideas more than now. Right now. War, energy, population, economics. Opportunity screams. We've been through seven years of idea killing. Oil men in charge with the mind set that anything new disrupting the flow of money into their wallets, their friend's wallets, their family's purses..... is bad. Anything that continues the status quo, meaning they remain at the helm for making decisions we all must live with thus keeping the wealth flowing in their direction....good. Thus we have the likes of Bush, of Cheney, of McCain, of Graham, of Gramm, of Lieberman. Kill the new ideas before any of them disrupt their particular world view. Sure. Some ideas seem good but prove otherwise. And some ideas look ridiculously wasteful at first, then show benefits later that were never anticipated. Ideas like Eisenhower's federal road system. Roosevelt's Lend Lease. Kennedy's moon notions. Teddy Roosevelt's national park system. All seemed wasteful at the time. But government is the one entity able to take money away from citizens and put it to use for the collective good (or not so good). Individuals with the very rare exception, think Howard Hughes, don't normally put themselves at risk for the sake of an idea. Meanwhile, Bush finds no problem pissing away a hundred billion a year, piled on the nationally burgeoning credit card, on a war we ought not be fighting, but alternative energy gets a cursory few hundred million because money is "tight". Alternative energy threatens the big energy boys. They've learned to become idea killers and their man, appointed by the Supreme Court, is in a position to veto, kill, squelch, bully and eliminate ideas that run cross-grain to their "conservative" extremes. Ahhh...the GOOD news! People are beginning to see the light. And with any luck enough of them will cast a vote for an administration of new ideas eliminating the excuses made for the Supreme Court, or the Congress, or the Electoral College, or any other device to thwart the will of the true majority, those devices often in place precisely to kill a departure from entrenched authority.

Hope at last. Hope at last. Thank God-almighty, there's hope at last.

July 11, 2008

Have you figured out this credit "thing" yet? Bottom line, at least from my perspective, is that a person, an entity, a state, a country, can live on borrowed money for just so long. At some point the bill comes due. At that point, the borrower pays it, or not. If not, no more credit. Time to sell stuff or it gets repossessed. And such is the case with millions of consumers, hundreds of thousands of home buyers, many cities and towns, a handful of states (especially California which is trying to put out more than a few fires these days), and perhaps the country. So all this tangible wealth concentrates upward to those who can buy at bargain rates. Let's face it, Mr. Potter (It's a Wonderful Life) knew exactly what to do when the floor fell out in good old Bedford falls. He knew it was time to buy on the cheap. He acquired properties from those "garlic eater" masses at firesale prices. And such is the case now....except that perhaps China may ultimately be the Mr. Potter of our time. And we have no angel....instead we have George W. Bush. A guy who has bankrupted a few companies in his day (and perhaps one country) only to run out the clock while somebody ELSE bailed his ass out. Only this time it's OUR ass....no angel, and no bailers. Welcome to the middle ages, Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class. Grim.

July 11, 08

Iran launched a few overstuffed bottle rockets into the Gulf of Hormuz. They puffed up their fundamentalist cheeks and warned the world to leave them to their devices, whatever that might be. The leadership of Iran is NUTS of course, but look where America is in terms of dealing with current day NUTCASES: Our debt is rising from the current lofty levels of 9.4 trillion. http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ Our troops are engaged thinly on two fronts of a Viet Nam-styled war (meaning not REAL war so much as volunteers policing those whom we don't politically agree.) Our defense mechanism is thin, our planes and field gear are getting used up, our nuclear arms are of little use, and our Marines and soldiers are overextended. We've been at this for six years, a trillion dollars, and the world is now convinced that the great superpower America is perhaps not so great OR super. Meanwhile emerging nations are whipping our butts at a game we started called capitalism. In America we pass the hard work to immigrant workers while we demand ever higher rewards for ever lesser input. The top ten percent of our wealthy owns ninety percent of our wealth. Our home values are falling. Our Federal currency proctors are inflating. Our institutions are failing. Our currency is weak and falling . Our social policies are in trouble. Our leaders are hamstrung and in perpetual argue mode. Our energy supply is dependent on the whims of aliens who increasingly dislike us.Congress argues, Bush plays out the clock while the mess HE MADE breaks the national bank. It's one hell of a spot. If you look at this blog two years ago you'll see my rants and raves along this line, but obviously knowing about a problem is not sufficient to compell a solution. After all, if *I* could see it coming, surely people paid to watch for such things had some inkling. So wisdom of leadership, wisdom of the electorate, and western wisdom in general is called into serious question.

Fools being totally foolish in a foolish land led by fools. I'm probably a fool to be saddened.

06 30 08

The obvious solution to energy, given the size of the issue, is the generation of electricity. Whether done by nuclear fission/fusion, hydrogen cells, burning of coal, HEAT that boils water that turns the big wheel seems the logical and traditional answer. Whether nuclear submarine or a blast of a piston's gas, HEAT turns the wheel that moves us in this phase of human "development". And what do we stand on? A planet beneath our feet, only the pudding-skin of which we as a species occupy and use. Below our feet is the Mohorovicic Discontinuity.....in most places just twenty miles down. The heat of the earth breeches surface on occasion such as in Iceland and venting heat to Hawaii. To paraphrase Sir Lawrence, it's only a matter of going. Once we have access to that natural and semi-perpetual heat, a potential energy solution may be at hand AND at the quantities and levels that will only marginally disrupt the 'progress' of us humans, whether we use it wisely or not.  

06 28 08

A letter to George W. Bush; Mr. Bush, realizing that a marine isn't forced to salute me when I leave the house, and armies of people don't daily expend tens of thousands of gallons of fuel on my personal behalf, I still would like to point out the fact that I, as a citizen of the United States, have as much right to be here as you do, or your kid, or your wife, etc. In the last seven years you've taken my country to war, you've doubled our debt to an amount probably unpayable. You've borrowed a trillion from the Asians to fight the Iraqis for reasons that turned out to be no reason at all. You've overseen the deaths of four thousand people, and tens of thousands of ruined lives. You've squandered precious time without any action assisting American genius be marshalled to get us out of our energy mess. You've tortured people. You let the likes of a Dick Cheney lead you into darkened corners. You've been paranoid over nuclear energy, a word you can't even pronounce. You advocate your own self righteous dictatorship in America. You've stacked the courts to the right. And you've squandered almost the entirity of American good-will overseas. You stay your course to all this action even as the polls drop to historic record lows, the people over whom you've sworn to protect telling you loudly, often and straight up they don't feel very good about you and your actions/inactions. And in this democracy you arrogantly say you don't listen to polls. And still you proceed. Why, you don't listen AT ALL sir! The joke in my neighborhood is, "let's give George Bush something shiny to distract him until November". We all hope that you don't cause more irreversible damage before we can get you replaced. Our economy is heading down, our currency is losing value, inflation increases whild home values diminish, our employment prospects are diminishing and our resources are thinning all while we hope against hope that the environment will continue to support human lifeform even as we pour tons of waste products in, on, under and into it. Whatever history settles on for your legacy, sir, and I'm sure it will be on the kind side even though the word "incompetent" does seem to pop up often, my own view of you is that you will likely be known as the "moron president".

6 24 08

You may be noticing that the stock market is moving down. You may also notice that the value of your home is moving likewise downward, and you may have heard on the news that fuel is up, and getting even more expensive. Two dollar a gallon gas seems quaint. And it's now being reported that the winter cold is going to be harder and more expensive for you to stave off by using any of the standard methods of home heating. And iron ore was raised this morning by ninety eight percent. And Dow Chemical has announced a twenty five percent increase in prices. And corn is fetching an elevated price, but quite a chunk of the crop this year was flooded and will not survive. But the Fed, in all its wisdom, keeps the interest index very very low, thus savers lose to growing inflation whilst paying taxes on any interest earned. Wealth thus transferred to fools. Meanwhile the dollar weakens (why would a foreign investor settle for two percent yield on dollars when he can get four percent on the euro.) Meanwhile, McCain offers three hundred million for a magic battery. Can you imagine what you could earn if you actually produced a magic battery? Would you even consider TELLING John McCain that you invented a magic battery? at least before you sell it to Toyota for many hundreds of millions in royalties. Isn't this the basic position of the middle east in that they HAVE it and you WANT it? California and Florida have rivers of auto traffic while saying "no drilling in our backyard", which is probaby a good thing since the answer to oil addiction is certainly not MORE oil. BUT..we don't quite get that yet. We will, soon enough...probably around the eight dollar a gallon level. And we've voted to spend another bunches of billions on Iraq. Money for nothing. But at least it just goes on the tab, right? Somebody else pays. Right?

All the above to illustrate we are in the silliest of silly seasons, still ticking up the debt, still spending more than we have, still burning more fuel than necessary, still hoping against hope that some smart little guy is going to produce some magic science bullet (although we tend to burn the Darwin books) that lets you have a life of ease and luxury for a budget price supplemented by that ever present "somebody else".

Do YOU get it yet? The nation's answers will begin to show themselves when you do. Not one second before.

6 19 08

Did you buy any Bin Laden Liquid today? Some Cesar syrup perhaps? A little Ahmadinajuice? Every time you pass your money over the counter for petroleum products, a device is manufactured designed to kill an American who serves in low level war to keep that stuff in your SUV tank so you can drive your chubby kid and seven empty SUV seats ten miles from home to play tee ball. And the arguments are being made that the answer to American oil dependence is.....MORE OIL. Now, I knew that Americans had dumbed down a bit over the past few years, but I really didn't know HOW dumb until THAT argument popped up. The answer, mah fray-ands (John McSame) is electric. American car companies are now frantically making smaller cars to try to survive poor sales. (Remember Vega, Pinto, Gremlin? Deja vu.) Meanwhile Tesla, Honda, Toyota, Smart and others are making ELECTRIC cars. Cars that can pass right by the old Saudi-soda pushers on their way to work and back. Cars that can be charged with solar panels mounted on a garage. Cars that use current technology to satisfy local travel needs. But does Detroit respond? Just as a test, try to communicate with Ford. Get GM on the phone. Can't do it. They don't hear you. Totally deaf. Too busy making TV ads telling you how great they are. So the question becomes WHY? The answer, mah fray-ands (sorry) is MONEY. The grease of American industry becomes their death by overdose. Talk about dumbing down. http://www.teslamotors.com/

6 15 08

There are several strains of governing concepts. A body of people under the dictates of a single person who does as he/she pleases is a dictatorship. A Republic acknowledges that it's too cumbersome for every citizen to vote up or down on every single societal issue, so a Representative is chosen to do it for them. The Representative is bound to listen carefully to the wishes of those he represents. A democracy uses the popular vote, usually a majority of at least half plus one, to choose the Representative who ultimately represents. And there are several hybrids of these schemes. In America, one hybridized element is the seperation of powers such that the body of Representatives such as the Congress has one third of the authority, while the Chief Executive, or President, has one third. The Judicial branch has one third of the authority as well, and each third has specific duties and exercize powers within different realms of specific responsibility. George W. Bush is going around Europe this week suggesting that he does not abide by "popular" opinion but rather does what HE thinks is right for his nation. Thus it can be argued that those he 'represents' are not well represented. If a Congress with a backbone were in session, and if they were un-poisoned by the partisanship that such a President inspires, the President could be removed by articles of impeachment if and when he steps over the line. Starting wars would be a good example. Unchecked, the President is, in effect, a dictator. The Judiciary whose primary authority is to decide which actions taken within federal law abide by our initial charter becomes an important authority, however the dictator President has opportunity to permanantly place people in that body who agree with his philosophies. Thus an important check/balance is diminished, particularly if philosophies and ideologies become contentious within the judicial body. Such has been the condition of America, and as she declines in areas of foreign policy, security, economy, justice, warfare, population, wealth distribution, taxes, debt and all the other aspects, any of which can alone bring down a nation, it becomes ever more vital that a good and wise decision be cast by those who wish to be well represented, and cast in every single referendum we call...the individual vote.

6 2 08

I recall a particularly funny showing of The Office where Dwight Schrute gave a rousing speech to a convention full of paper salesman. Jim had lifted from the internet a Bonito Mussolini speech from the forties and Dwight read it ver batum except to insert the word "salesman" now and again. The audience was energized. Enchanted. Cheered and applauded. Amazed at his insight. All straight from a brutal dictator's speech demanding Italians join with the Nazi's in WWll. Hilarious. Except that we now endure a McCain offering of the same scene....a recycle of Bush doctrine. More of the same. More war. More waste, more indoctrination of the far right. T'would be funny if not tragic. Meanwhile, McClellan comes forward with a mea culpa that has no meaning in time. Just as Colin Powell passed on standing straight up like a man and telling the brutal truth on the WMD issues, as he pandered with half lie on behalf of our war-bound, right-wing fool, McClellan stood as the official information guy and passed onto the very people the right-wing fool represents.... lie after lie to be printed as fact. And to war we went. And to bankruptcy we still plod. And now he wants to sell his book on this cowardice. He of course is being painted by the right-wing fools with the same traitor-colored brush as Richard Clark was, or anyone else who dares stand up while the jackboots course over the dead bodies, but then....who cares? It's OUR bodies, not theirs. The heroes who throw themselves on the grenade are dead. The cowards write books long after the grenade has torn into the chest....just not THIER chests.

Meanwhile, the inflation monster's head is now peering at us and there are other brands of cowards such as those who control Federal Funds Rates etc. So, guess who gets to endure the eventual blast of the fiscal grenade? And guess who'll later say, "Oh...so sorry. My mistake". And they'll sell you a thirty dollar book telling you all about it. (Inflation? Better make that a ninety dollar book.)

5 13 08

After the Democratic primary returns, it's apparent that West Virginia is the new Mississippi.

5 9 08

A most telling element between the candidates has to do with energy and the problems our country faces in that very significant area. Two candidates, Clinton and McCain, advocate an eighteen cent gas tax holiday where filler-uppers of SUV's do not pay for the roads upon which their overweight gasoline burners roll. It doesn't seem to matter that the oil companies or oil producing countries will consume that price difference for themselves immediately, nor that a price drop will diminish supplies by promoting consumption. It only seems to matter that potential voters perceive a personal "break" by candidates who claim to have, but in fact have no authority to accomplish such a thing. On the other hand, Obama asked, "Really? THIS is our energy policy proposal?" This is more to the point. Long term solutions have to be explored, and current infrastructure has to be maintained while that goes on. Whether we bore holes twenty miles down to tap sub-mantle heat, or turn sea water into hydrogen to spin our societal wheels, we have to decide which way to commit and then build the infrastructures that coexist with earth, society, productivity and quality of life. Long term solutions will be a huge breath of fresh air after having endured eight years of no solutions at all. Conducting war, vetoing research, and wasting away resources as we dig further into debt is not a policy. Here's hoping the electorate thinks things through just a bit in the upcoming election cycle. Meanwhile, four, five, six and perhaps seven dollar gasoline is a near certainty as we delay the decisions to embrace real solution. For now, it seems to me most voters just want their eighteen cents.

5 1 08

Here we are as predicted. The nation is coming to an economic crossroads. People bitching about gas prices (even the ones who voted for Bush, which is amazing to me. What did they THINK was going to happen?) The Fed lowered the discount rate to two percent even as REAL inflation exerts six percent pressure on regular people. All three Presidential candidates are pandering in areas they'll have only jawbone influence over as Chief Exec. (After all, I think there still may be a LEGISLATIVE branch of government whose job it is to actualize by majority these fantastic schemes of Executive wannabes, foolish as they may collectively have proven themselves.) Food prices are moving up as foodstocks are converted to SUV fuel. Housing values still declining even as inflation worsens because banks are understandably reluctant to make loans to buyers who have proven themselves un-loanworthy judging by the elevated default rate. Meanwhile housing inventories are being shorted by foreclosure proceedings. The war drags on expensively and indeterminitely and the current administration will just let it cost the country it is supposed to be leading a phenomenal price in lives and money as Bush runs out the clock, turning over his mess to somebody else next November. (Beats me why the Democrats would even field a candidate given the heat and criticism the new administration is bound to face.) Meanwhile lawmakers and wannabe's all seem to be disconnected from real world economics. There's talk of a 'Gas Tax Holiday'....which means consumers will be compelled to consume MORE fuel, not less. There's talk of socialized medicine....which means there will be LESS care available for even MORE people scratching around for services free to THEM but stretched to a socialized taxpayer. Meanwhile the debt clock ticks past 9.4 trillion. The deficit marches anattended. People scramble to sell their trinkets to get enough cash to fill tanks of oversized SUV's they cannot afford as they commute daily miles to jobs that are diminishing in the face of international competition. Answers? Common sense, sacrifice, innovation, productivity, energy wisdom, collective and individual effort in the interest of our nation and her place in the world. Reality? Personal consumption, demand, expectation.

4 11 08

I've wondered lately what might have happened if the French had landed in America around 1861 and imposed their standing army and guns onto the Civil War battlefield. The issue of course was economic.....slavery (the energy of the day). My guess is that the south would have battled the French as imposers. And my other guess is that the north would have battled the French as imposers. Either way, the civil war in America would have gone on until the major issue (slavery) was settled, just with the addition of French casualties. I won't insult you by carrying that thought forward. Be it suggested that the Shia want the oil($), the Sunni's want the oil($), the Kurds have/want the oil($). And they are going to spill blood until the issue is settled. Meanwhile, the Americans are broke but still imposing on what is, and will be, a civil war (complete with religious faction). No. More than broke....bankrupt. Ten trillion in debt, one trillion deficit, a crumbling infrastructure, no energy plan, and a declining currency and job outlook. Sadly unwise. But then we've had sadly unwise leadership now for almost eight years. Maybe longer. The Decider decided to bust America in the same way he busted his own business interests in his more youthful day. Sad really. Even sadder that none of us can escape this tragic reality. Ah well.....at least we know now we are capable of torture, or social disinterest, of enduring our own decline. The best of our numbers put on the uniform and do what they're told. For this service they will receive ribbons and non monetary accolades up until the time we engage in yet another foolish adventure rooted in the judgement of the well-born who may perceive themselves above the fray. Most war vets will want the same things as always...they will want jobs, health care, and ongoing appreciation. Not likely to happen. But the cycle will repeat given American refusal to properly understand her place in the world. And who knows? Maybe of the portion of Americans who finish high school, and of them the portion who go on to higher education, and of them the portion who go on to look more deeply into physics and science, and of them who have the IQ and political clout to fund a project, and of those funded projects that actually prove viable, perhaps we might find the silver energy bullet that finally answers the slavery/petroleum/labor question? Could happen. Call me an optimist...in a monkeys flying out of butts kinda way.

4 4 08

Here we are about a quarter way through a recession that government is loathe to admit. And we're at about six percent inflation, which government is loathe to admit. A definite tip of the hat is due Senator Dodd who says that we are at the cusp of socializing financial loss while privatizing financial gain. The taxpayer bails out the bad deals and the money boys are thus free to go make more complex deals that will benefit them immediately at no obvious risk to them. The short sellers made out very well over the Bear Strearns fiasco. Monetary policy is weak, Bernanke is clueless, the Fed has a broken rudder where protecting the currency is concerned (big picture thinking is currently on leave). But the good news is that lawmakers are at least talking about the obvious problems in more thoughtful ways. Of course, the vote-buying side of them think it's OK to bail out the individual who didn't (or couldn't....see note on high school dropout rate) read his own mortgage contract and signed only to find out he can't afford the house he just bought. If we bail them out, and if we bail out the investment banks, and if we bail out all others who otherwise make bad decisions that THEY THINK will COST SOMEBODY ELSE, we can only look forward to a whole lot more of that kind of thing. And the cost is huge. The integrity of the dollar is undermined. The solidity of the economy is undermined. And the need to make people responsible for their own actions falls to new levels of victomhood thinking. Meanwhile, the taxpayer faces that same old ten trillion dollar debt, the same old trillion dollar deficit, the ongoing war, the same wastefulness of the vote buyers, all while having no real plan as to how to replace petroleum based energy with something more locally available and regenerative from a physics perspective. (Physics? Forty percent of entire populations of many high schools are dropping out thinking perhaps there is a living to be made in consuming drugs and hip-hop?) Wisdom. Why doth ye avoid us?

3 25 08

Veep Cheney recently was confronted by ABC reporter Martha Raddatz : "Two-thirds of Americans say it's [Iraq war] not worth fighting, and they're looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives. " Dick Cheney responded: "So?" http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_richard__080325_so_3f_in_dick_s_head.htm

The arrogance represented by this single-word interrogative, and the ongoing revelations exposed in many documents including the recent PBS (Frontline) Documentary "Bush's War" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/ should give thinking Americans pause for overdue alarm. These elected representatives of the American people have acted with such disdain for the ideals of American democracy as to be worthy of the ongoing title as "the worst administration in American History". There was not just incompetency. There was outright fraud, dereliction of duty, misjudgment, torture, domestic privacy incursion, lying, falsifying of position (slam dunk) and infighting within and between departments fomented by a puppeteering Cheney and a not-very-smart son of an ex president who probably was in the office based on fraud to begin with.

McCain is of this conservative mind, however generally speaking, unless the Democrats self-destruct fighting for what they perceive as a sure thing in November, he is probably just being used. A hero-patsy of known quantity flanked by the likes of Leiberman and Lindsay Graham, weak sisters with almost zero chance of winning the prize. Thus we have activities lately that will economically come home to roost about the time the Democrats take the stage. Inflation, economic stagnation, joblessness, diminished funds will certainly be waiting for the new President, all engineered for maximum party-liable damage by the most coniving and malfeasant administration imaginable. The part of all this that makes me cry is that the voter seems oblivious to the very facts being presented even as they unfold before them. I suppose it takes bigger bombs than a couple of 757's banging into buildings to awaken the current crop of comatose, gassed up citizens.

3 18 08

There is an email floating around the net suggesting gasoline buyers can influence prices if they don't buy from this company or that. A response:

This oil message has floated around the net for years. It's not going to work.   What MIGHT work is if consumers stop buying gasoline powered cars. The military and power generation industries will buy all the petroleum products produced within the intermediate term, so there is no consumer control of prices possible. A battery powered vehicle is within technical reach....and a battery can be charged by the sun. It'll be expensive at first, and the flow and logistics of traffic each of us encounter will be very different. Road rage will have to yield to road courtesy. Long distance driving will have to be accommodated by some kind of "fast-charge", or "while-charge" system. The GM Volt, due for production in '09 (provided a capable battery is developed) will carry a small gas engine to accomplish this, but a way to accomplish "while-charge" should eventually be advanced such that no gasoline is burned at all, at least for individual transportation purposes. We should also rethink long term mass transit.  

Petrochemical use will always be with us. The plastics, food/fertilizer, chemical industries heavily require petroleum as a raw material. However we can extend domestic stocks, possibly to the levels of self sufficiency if we can develop Alaska and deep-Gulf cleanly, by starting NOW to realize that the oil age as we've known it is coming to an end. Once we begin using the heat of the upper mantle only a few miles beneath our feet, and we start using the sun efficiently, stop crowding ourselves and cease wars fought over the last drop of foreign produced petroleum, realize that we cannot have open-ended population growth, we can begin to realize that real solution is possible, but not without a shift in our expectation, social and cultural cooperation (including a sane immigration policy). When (and if) we do, we address the carbon issue, the pollution issues, the economic issues and foreign relations issues of our day.  If we don't, we can expect to see more email schemes like the one below circulating to show our desperation and helplessness, which of course will continue to reflect prices way and beyond four dollar fuel. (By the way, my friend in England now pays almost nine dollars a gallon. If we don't adjust, so likely will we.)

3 17 08

One of the most disconcerting areas of politic discourse as relates to economics lately is that we don't tell ourselves the truth. We hire leaders to jawbone and spin so that we can continue our economic drunkenness. We want to be convinced that we're on top of the heap, the super-power, the top of the pyramid. The Asian markets took a serious hit last night, some presuming the U.S. markets will follow suit over time. Meanwhile reputed economists, hindsight glasses firmly affixed, are now tossing around the D word. Depression. The spin-chorus of "we're number one" goes on, of course. But it sounds ever more hollow. Normally it's easy enough to be hopeful long term, but this time, aside from our enormous debt, we have a problem: ENERGY. To run American industry, if industry is going to be in the mix addressing American economic issues, lots and lots of energy will be needed. To buy petrochemicals in the volumes required from cultures hell-bent on killing us, all while pissing it away on war and Hummers as global competitors make wiser industrial use of their energy allocations, is pure American folly. So, a change in energy consumption, use, production and culture will ultimately be required. A change in leadership will be required to begin the long slog out of the mess we're in. A change in the way we see ourselves as Americans will have to be far more self-honest. Up to now, it's been relatively easy to hide while others make bad decisions in our behalf. Easy to hide while others fight it out over ridiculously contrived wars. Oceans of energy wasted. Galaxies of effort misdirected. The good news is that change is within the power of the voter, collectively speaking. The bad news is that the collective seems to have lost the wisdom from which the United States has derived historical good fortune. Whether that is because of dilution of resolve, intellect, culture, caring or resources is of little note unless knowing the why of our misfortunes leads to enlightened collective resolution. This of course will require self honesty. And self honesty will be quite impossible while we spin and jawbone ourselves into continued slumber.

3 11 08

Debt crisis?  When did we leave behind the concept of supply and demand? If there is a dearth of available money, why can a saver only get two-to-three percent under the inflation rate less taxes for his/her savings efforts? The fact is that the 'debt crisis' is manufactured. There were folks who tried to leverage others' funds using un-creditworthy devices and they got hung out to dry, and now they want to be bailed out (of course). Supply and demand principles should be firmly in play for currency just like any other commodity (if it is a legitimate currency) and the price of money should be going UP, not down. The dirty secret, of course, is that government is using this opportunity to "increase liquidity" which is code for "inflate". At nearly ten trillion in debt http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ and with more and more socially-contracted promises of entitlement coming due, with a war on, with diminishing energy and no meaningful energy policy, with a zero savings rate, with a fool in the Whitehouse, it's 'government's' only option other than raising federal taxes by twenty five percent on income for everbody. Outlook? Watch for eventual twelve percent interest, stagflation, a super bear market, and a run up of gold. People with money still have it because they weren't fools. Others were soon parted.

So, to simplify: if you were a bank and inflation was six percent, would you loan your money out at four percent and take the relative pre-tax loss? Of course not. So why would lenders now be asked to do that? Patriotism? Or is it truly the silly season and Republicans are squeezing every teat they can to get their political bacon saved. Mr. Hoover? Comments?

3 3 08

Once there was a President named Ferdinand Marcos. He was President of the Phillipines, and when he died his wife ran for President and won. She liked shoes very much and generally was a very self centered soul.

At another time there was a President named George Bush. He was voted out of office after his first term because of his lack of economic understanding. His son and namesake, George Bush, ran for and became President of the U.S. He also had little understanding of economy and tended to be a stubborn and self centered soul.

In Cuba there was a President named Fidel Castro. He was a revolutionary soldier and was also very self centered. He kept the entire population of Cuba out of modern times his entire adult life. He was President of Cuba until he decided not to be. His brother, Raul Castro then became President of Cuba.

Once there was a President who understood economy somewhat, but didn't quite understand that sex in the nation's capital with someone other than his wife was probably not a good idea for a President. As things turned out, neither was lying about it. He served two terms as President, and he spent part of his second term under impeachment. Then his wife wanted to be President.

Question: what do all these people seem to have in common?

2 27 08

Here is a link to buy gold....or at least to check the level to which it rises or falls. http://goldprice.org/index.html It will be wise of you to begin thinking of your dollar as valued less as gold rises, and more when gold falls. The mark today is $960. A few days ago it was around $930. So roughly a three percent rise in the price of gold in a few days. On the other hand, the money you save in a so-called high yield savings bank (the highest I get just now is 3.91 percent) gains this over a year's time while on deposit. However if you deduct the year's inflation, currently "officially" four percent, then remove your income tax gain (twenty percent of your 'gain' shall we say?) then you bring home from the efforts of saving your money for a year a little less than ninety four cents. We really don't have to wonder why the savings rate in America is zero, do we? It's no secret why Americans are spendthrifts with a wallet full of maxed out credit cards. And by the way, that four percent interest we discussed above is in actuality SEVEN when factoring food and fuel.....which your beneficent and tax-crazed government conveniently exclude. And last month, manufacture wholesale prices actually rose one percent. So the REAL inflation extrapolated over a year is 12 percent at the wholesale level on manufactured goods. This means that in a couple of years when government and the press feels safe enough to come clean (meaning no high stakes elections on the horizon) real inflation will be somewhere around 12 to 15 percent. By then energy sellers will have caught on in a meaningful $$ way, wage earners will figure it's not really worth going in to work only to come out further in debt than when they went in (while the boss gives himself another million dollar bonus), and that the incredibly stupid measures taken by past federal administrations will be in full force, and the little guy will once again realize himself the patsy holding the fiscal bag.

So Mr. and Mrs. future patsy.....kindly print this little paragraph, paste it on your fridge, and in a couple of years consider how much you might have salvaged of your wealth if you had just put it into $960 gold on this date. Here's wishing us luck, however it goes.

2 21 08

There's the word. Did you hear it? And the comparisons to the Carter Administration, followed by the "Morning in America" talk the Reagan Administration used after Paul Volker (not a part of the political administration) raised interest rates heavily to bring inflation down from eighteen percent to four. The word? "Stagflation". Back then I recall what a sigh of relief it was to own a mortgaged home. It meant that the inflated increase in the value of a home could be paid off with the inflated dollars. Cheap dollars paying off loans originally made in expensive dollars, relatively speaking. The exact opposite of what's happening in housing today where the house is worth less than the balance owed AND a mortgage very often adjusts upward with the rate of inflation (that Bernanke guy again). So inflation in the presense of economic stagnation was called stagflation. We recovered from the seventies of course. However the similarities of those days and the present seem to be slight. Your home is losing value, not gaining.....and this in a time of inflation which is being dishonestly conveyed with contorted and fuzzy federal math. Inflation at four percent, not including food and fuel, but factoring in falling housing costs, is not reality. We have to eat, and we THINK we have to drive to the store to pick up a two dollar item, burning four dollars of fuel to do it. So the outcome will very much be interesting in the intermediate term, not to mention an important future epiphany of Bernanke who seems to think he controls all elements of an economy fueled now by cheap (printed for the occasion) dollars available to banks which are NOT all that willing to lend. The Banks have learned. Bernanke has not. Meanwhile we remind ourselves of our NOW 9.3 trillion dollar debt ( http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ ), a 500 billion annual shortfall of federal income verses its spending obligations, an off-budget war, and a retard President travelling about little countries which for some reason like the guy outwardly which compels the moron to promise free money to them.....money that does not belong to him. Money that is borrowed. Money on which YOU the taxpayer will make interest payments at rates tied to Bernanke's little education period. For now, if you put your $100 in your local bank today and get the going rate, you will get in return about $95 in buying power for your thrifty ways this time next year. And have you ever wondered where that difference goes? Think of it as a tax. Consider yourself lucky enough that you didn't have to fill out a contorted federal form, weighted to give some people economic advantage, to accomplish that little transfer of wealth from you to ..... uh.....THEM.

From Aspen Times http://www.aspentimes.com/article/2008198091324

In election 2008, don’t forget Angry White Man

by Gary Hubbell

February 9, 2008

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain. Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians. There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard. His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding. He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives. The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him. The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter. His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American. He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.” He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner. He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English. Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement. He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush. He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

Feb 6, 2008

My my, doesn't the time fling by. Realizing I wasn't asked, here's how the election of '08 may go: McCain against Clinton: unknown outcome. Conservatives hate both, liberals can find something in each, and both promise the moon...just of different solar systems. (In fact, any way this thing goes, the voter will be faced with a classic choice of either GUNS or BUTTER). My first guess would be that voters will massively stay home. I would be in that group. Either could easily be a disaster for America. Both will polarize government to varying degrees of paralysis. If it comes down to McCain against Obama, old yellow-teeth McCain will be abandoned by independents en masse and be trounced. TROUNCED. People who don't usually vote will turn out in huge number. There would be no oratory contest. The old OLD guard would be pulverized in every sense by the advance of new idea and by the very core of the English language. It will be a pounding and McCain won't stand a chance. That said, and knowing how the Democrats work hard to give the store away, I will guess it's going to be McCain Clinton. The only mystery left is whether it will be Vice President Leiberman, Huckabee, or Graham. And it will be a long, hard four year extension of Bush-esque backwardness.....so-called conservatives spending us into further oblivion, flailing warrior-like at enemies both real and imagined, screening and rescreening until we're all pretty much waterboarded into submission by a party known for its proclivity toward restricting and controlling the behaviors of others.

Jan 28, 2008

Monday morning thoughts, the week of Florida primaries; if you like WAR, John McCain is your man. McCain is about war, about fear, about selling "security" (the oldsters in Florida will be big buyers), and about his own ambition. His interview with Russert et al is always equivocated. Bottom line: McCain means war for years if not decades. (War costs energy and produces CO2 in a gigantic way, but that's just a secondary issue...see below). So, if you enjoy war and fear, vote McCain.

To the energy question, petroleum is a result of millions of years of sea-born photosynthetic bio activity, compressed and heated for eons by sea and then earth, then migrated to the relative surface via porous rock, capped and contained in upside down (anticline) pools by nonporous rock. The largest known reserve is in the Saudi desert known as Ghawar, which is now about half pumped. Carbon dioxide is released back to the atmosphere upon the burning of petroleum, and the result is the same as happened when millions of years of vulcanism did the same basic thing in terms of producing atmospheric CO2, thus producing heated earth conditions. Once released, the same thing that periodically produces heated conditions for the earth again will heat atmosphere and sea. Thus the cycle repeats. Estimates are that we have reached peak oil such that we burn now more than can be produced, and production will continue to decline even as demand increases worldwide, and that there is about 10 times enough CO2 locked up and yet to be burned to return the earth to uninhabitable conditions (at least for humans....anaerobic bacteria will be just fine). Once the CO2 is in the atmosphere, the little animals that sucked it up enough to cool earth down the last cycle will have a chance to do it again.

All of this to say that, except for voting for a guy who will promulgate war and conditions for war, we seem to have little control over ouselves as a species. Interesting to think about, eh? To top things off with a cherry, tonight the biggest 'tard ever elected President of the United States, the embodiment of proof that voters are not always collectively wise, will make his swan-song speech after over seven years of selling fear and faux security. He started, yes, STARTED wars in the name of America. Torture became tolerable on his watch. Spending into mind-numbing debt will be ever to his memory. He vetoed stem cell research, vetoed spending dedicated to his own agenda, gave breaks to the rich while taking from the middle-class, even sold a war to his countrymen using lies, untruths and known false intelligence. Yet he struts on, prepared to attempt, according to the headlines, to try to repair his legacy by attempting to "calm nerves" as the economic chickens appear ready to come home to roost. John McCain is cut of this same cloth. Maybe a tad brighter than Bush, but of the same mind and outlook. From my perspective, he has a shot.

Jan 22, 2008

Now that politics is getting sticky and George Bush is looking more like Herbert Hoover, flailing at economic signals while people line up for virtual soup, those readers who may have been reading my rants for a year or so recognize that every single prediction has become fact. So with that dubious honor, and with a new year facing us promising to be very entertaining on several fronts, with fresh evidence of the anxious OJT'ish reactions of the Fed and the freshman reactions of Chairman Bernanke, we can with some confidence predict that within thirty months of the date above, inflation will be at eight percent or higher. Gold will approach two thousand dollars per ounce, gasoline will become more expensive at the pump even though the middle east will begin to recognize that bringing down the economics of the western world to gain a couple of immediate extra bucks isn't in their long term best interest. Little piddle wars will continue to arise, and some will escalate. Africa will not awaken and will not stop destroying itself, Europe will become more and more internationally isolated even as the Euro gains against the dollar. The Asians will discover the Euro as an alternative store of value to their growing hoard of international currency even though financial yield will not be what they might hope. New Orleans will continue to be impoverished and will begin to understand that it will never again regain its former status other than a city where breaking the rules is the rule. California, being a major factor in the election due to the high Latino influence, will become even more casually beligerant and will continue down the path of considering itself a kind of non-state state following its own path on several fronts particularly in the area of energy consumption and environmental issues. Iraq will go through a period of internal combustion before retreating to an Islamic religious authoritarianship of a fractured and self destructive nature.....poor Iraq will be a diminished country for centuries. America will move on to ruin, as result of errors of past political judgment, other parts of the world as terrorists make occasional news. Hit and run activity will be more common. The good news? Bush will be gone. The bad news...the legacy of his bad judgments and ongoing contentiousness will continue to exact a price on the world.

Jan 19, 2008

So let's see if we can follow this true time-in-the-life story. A guy does his military duty back when it was OK to draft only men for wars that nobody suspected was unAmerican because Americans generally trusted government. He was taxed out of several business efforts over the following few years and spent the last twenty years of his life working for government. At the end of over twenty years work, the government offered him X plus $1200 to retire a bit early so as to trim government outlay. He figured he'd had enough government work and took the deal. But after he quit and his records went to the Office of Personnel Management for processing, they denied him the "plus $1200" portion and gave him only X less certain tax deductions which netted him about a tenth of what it actually takes for normal people to live. A letter to his 'representative' yielded no help even though he had everything in ironclad writing. Lucky for him his home was paid for and his other investments had been modestly successful, because now he's sixty and pretty much unemployable whether there are federal age discrimination laws or not. Anyway, the government sends him his X every month, but deducts Y for taxes etc. But then the economy goes into recession because people like our little guy can't spend quickly enough as he pays for things like gas and food, taxes and war, inflation and fees, property taxes and bridges to nowhere, at least not fast enought to suit goverment. So the government, itself nine trillion dollars in debt, decides to 'kickstart' the economy such that they will "rebate" $800 to folks like our hero. Our hero, being no fool, takes the money and applies it to his 2007 federal income taxes which just about covers the amount he owes government which fully taxes his retirement income, at least as far as he can tell from the strange and twisted rules he reads from a thick guide supplied by government which explains the rules from the government's perspective, while later government assesses a penalty for his not estimating government payments fast enough during the year.

The moral of the story: your government has completely lost its mind and it's up to you to fix it by voting wisely or the situation will get worse, if not fatal.

Jan 17, 2008

Are we hearing this correctly? A "stimulus" package is being encouraged by Bernanke? Inflation at the wholesale level last year was over six percent, interest on savings averages less than three percent (thus a saver loses three points of his money per year), the debt is over $9 trillion, and Bernanke suggests the government send everybody (probably excluding me) some money from a broken treasury? Whether via check or tax credit, does it seem that the money flows in the wrong direction? If the government is in debt, shouldn't it be trying to pay debt DOWN by bringing money the other way? Is Bernanke qualified for that job? Shouldn't he be RAISING interest rates to encourage savings such that money can be made available to feed the already bloated debt monstor the Government is creating? Shouldn't he be RAISING interest rates to prevent further deterioration of our currency? Shouldn't he be RAISING interest rates to encourage foreign investors to keep their money in our country so that we won't have to PRINT money to pay interest on BORROWED federal money which has long since been wasted by these same irresponsible Goverment people? Are we hearing this correctly? Or has there been yet another unseen or uncommunicated Orwellian twist in the fabric of an already thrice twisted economy?

Jan 15, 2008

The focus today is on Michigan. Seems Romney suggests jobs can be brought back to this automotive dinosaur, and McCain says otherwise. As I recall the seventies, when the first oil shock came to America, Detroit responded with such fine products as Vega, Pinto, Gremlin. American buyers didn't believe the oil shortage to be permanant and buyers bought heavy iron (just as Americans did subsequently with the SUV fad). Lincolns and Cadillacs were big sellers. Volkswagen et al took a dive in the face of all the newcomer gas-savers (most of which were unable to go fifty thousand lifetime miles) and the Vegas and Pintos went where they belonged....to the scrap heap. This didn't stop the profit hungry American auto industry from raising their prices AND eventual horsepower, nor did it stop the common-sense-challenged unions from building into every American unit thousands of dollars of worker benefits ultimately making the Japanese product not only cheaper, but better engineered, better poised to take advantage of the energy situation, and a wiser consumer product for a buyer to consider. Fast forward (right through K-car) to today, and Michigan is crying the big cry about their employment being low, about their little one-state recession. Meanwhile on the west coast, Tesla http://www.teslamotors.com/ is manufacturing an electric car. Fisker (west coast again) http://reviews.cnet.com/4326-11443_7-6602781.html is making an electric hybrid. India is building a "People's Car" that retails for less than the amount built into any American make just to cover worker's health care benefits ($2500 retail). Boo hoo hoo, Michigan. The world has taken away your business fair and square. The forces of competition and your own bad business judgment has impoverished you, and you want what? You want the taxpayer of America to give you something for free? What? You want a friendly President so he can attempt to channel federal resources (Feds themselves in debt nine trillion dollars) to you so you can continue your lethargic, unproductive, uncreative, unimaginative, noncompeting ways? Can you say LOSER, Michigan?

Jan 6, 2008

With the impressive Ohio Republican Primary win by Mike Huckabee, a guy who cannot possibly win the general election (yes....that's so obvious that I can make such a statement a year from the election) there is chatter about a "fair" tax. This means, in Huck-a-speak at least, that taxes will be paid at time of purchase rather than at time of earning. So a purchase of $1000 in today's money would cost $1400 in Huck-a-bucks. This is to cover all federal taxes, including Social Security. It's wise for us to note that this idea surfaced in England years ago, and the VAT (Value Added Tax) was born, which is in ADDITION to all the taxes that was being collected before. (Get it? A tax hike.) Which is exactly what would happen in the good ole USA if a federal sales tax were imposed. That aside, what exactly is "fair" about a tax equally imposed on the minimum wage spender and the Warren Buffets of this world? Nothing. The middle and low end of the taxpayers would be paying the lion's share...not to mention the continued burden of all the current taxes. Even the county where I live is getting in on the add-on act. On the last property tax bill in this county was a 'rainwater' tax. I'm waiting now for the 'oxygen depletion' tax. The disheartening thing in all this is that nowhere in all the candidate posturing (with the possible exception of Ron Paul who has been given little opportunity to expound) is the dire fiscal situation we're currently in. Previously I linked the Federal Debt Clock so that it be obvious how much debt the U.S. owes right up to this minute. Not too much talk is offered as to how to pay this down (get that number to roll downward), but it seems obvious to me that we cannot begin to pay this down while we spend more than we rake in. Thus....the inflation schemes. Thus, the "fair tax" schemes. So....take caution citizens. Vote well. The politician is highly trained to take from you so he or she can promise something to you for "free" (health care, anyone?) whilst keeping his or her cushy little jet-setting position. If you think anybody but YOU will pay for this, then you have some more reading to do.

Christmas Day, 2007

Time to reflect on where we are. Some background first: I was entreprenuerial at one point, until the IRS appeared at my door to make sure they were getting their cut from me. I was working until about June of each year at the time just to get my taxes paid, not including local, county, city fees etc. What a struggle it was for a small-timer. I decided after long reflection that I was on the wrong side of the tax issue and went back to school, eventually graduating and going to work for government....first for Treasury. IRS. All I had to do was scowl and say "BOO" with a little Congressional jargon thrown in and citizens would pony up. Not even citizens....their lawyers and accountants. "BOO"....and the money rolled in. Then on to Defense where billions were spent to make the officers' congenial ceremonial parties more enjoyable....where the steaks were thick for the Colonels and parking for their new cars was plentiful. Billions!!! Still...better to spend than to pay, or collect. Then on to Veteran Affairs from whom I retired (as predicted, on the correct side of the tax issue where a personal advantage is concerned). Billions more spent and consumed. A true consumer of tax dollars. Who can say NO to "supporting the troops". Only the "troops" (much less the "Veterans") don't get all that money directly......GE medical systems, doctors, shrinks, support, technical, admin, infrastructure, retirements...the money flowed. Billions!!!!!.Way better to CONSUME than to SPEND than to COLLECT than to PAY. Got the picture, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer?

So NOW you have a complete fool in the White House...for eight long contentious years now. This guy has spent your grandchildren's money. At nine trillion dollars in debt you will never see a balance in your lifetime. All there is left to do is inflate to meet growing obligation. The Fed is doing that now. And meanwhile, we borrow from the Chinese to buy fuel from the Arabs to make war with the world. A complete fool. And new fools are lining up in Iowa to be the new spender in chief. Only one is making any kind of pragmatic noise of economic and constitutional prudence.....and he stands almost NO chance of nomination. Americans don't buy that kind of truth. Especially rural Iowans who are under so many selection rules that strongmen like Chavez and Putin would be envious. YOU may eventually get to choose between two foolish spenders, and you can strut home in your SUV thinking you did your duty. But your REAL duty will be to PAY. If you make an honest pie chart of your annual household spending, you will find RIGHT NOW that the sliver of that chart representing your tax obligation is over a third of the entire chart.....it will be the largest slice. And STILL you and every family member owes an added thirty thousand dollars in today's money to make up for the HUGE imbalance of debt that Congress just made larger by seventy billion off budget dollars (a 'down payment' as our Fool in Chief iterates) to carry on a war until about March 08 against a country which had nothing to do with 911. And you'll be so proud of yourself for voting. But... down the economic drain your country tumbles. Time to reflect on what your country will be when the dollar has NO psychological value. Think how much respect your grocer might have for you if you show up with no money wanting to buy a load of groceries. That's the respect America is about to receive from the rest of the world. Don't believe me? Keep voting foolishly for fools then. And it's a darn good bet that you'll do exactly that.

12 12 07

Let's try to suss out the meaning of this so-called "credit crunch". In a business transaction there is a buyer and a seller. This goes for cars, clothes, sex, groceries, money, anything. If the transaction is normal, one party wants to get as much for the commodity as possible, the other wants a bargain. So agreement must be made. There was the same amount of money available for "rent" one moment before the credit crunch as there was one moment after. The difference: investors got burned by buyers who did not pay the agreed price but rather defaulted on their borrowing agreement. Thus, lenders became cautious when these securities failed. Never mind that this occured by virtue of the manipulations of greedy sellers who bundled up money deals, sold them charging fees for the sale, then did the whole thing over again lowering the standard as to who might be allowed to "rent" the money to keep the scheme going. Leaving that detail out, lenders are now generally afraid to loan money. They have losses to recover. What would compell a lender to begin loaning money again? Answer: a higher price. Simple. Offer enough incentive to rent the money, and the lender will come off the product and lend it. At some price, the losses from inevitable deadbeats will be paid by those who repay with interest. But....what does the Fed do? It LOWERS the price of money. Not its OWN money, but ultimately the money of those who save (sparing you the intricacies of Federal Bond Trading). The idea seems to be that if cheap money is made available to banks, suddenly they'll be compelled to lend money cheaply to borrowers. But bankers aren't lending. Why would they? The return is too low because the Fed has set the rate below profitability. The scheme is unnecessarily convoluted now, but it stands to reason that credit worthy borrowers aren't likely to borrow and spend in the amounts needed to enhance prosperity....which it seems is Bernanke's idea of the Fed's core responsibility. So in the coming year or two, the Fed, whose job it WAS under Greenspan, Volker et al to protect the currency, after Bernanke's flailing OJT trying to influence economic activity at the long term peril of the value of the dollar, will watch as economy slows, National Debt mounts, savings rates decline to the negative (who wants to save money when a return on capital is less than inflation), the dollars loses value, inflation worsens, currency flees to safer havens, and businesses begin to fail ultimately bringing the stock market lower.

Truly....it's amateur hour at the Fed these days. Guess who's going to pay?

12 4 07

When an oilman drills for oil, he is less interested in how many feet of pipe he's sent down his hole but is interested in what geologic strata his drill has penetrated. Oil exists in a particular fashion based on the formational underlyings of the earth, which is anything but flatly striated. They are known as geo-synclines and geo-anticlines. So the oilman hires a paleontologist to tell him from the little animals that are recovered, as he progresses, which strata has been reached by the driller. The paleontogist knows by comparing the evolutionary stage of a particular animal at a particular depth. He judges whether the shell of an animal is dextral or sinistral. He can tell by whether the animal is extinct, and when its extinction occured within stratagraphic columns. These are well known in paleo-sciences and your oil is dependent on this knowledge. Some people refer to these scientists as "bug men". There is nothing "theoretical" about it. Evolution occured and is fact. HOW it occured is subject to changing explanation, otherwise known as theoretical explantion, and the most accepted of all theories was long ago advanced by Mr. Charles Darwin.

Today, in the Republican primary race, at least three contenders have declared that they do not believe in evolution. At all. They don't understand that the theory to explain the fact of evolution is the discussion. They just say they don't believe in it. It pleases the most foolish among us to hear them declare this. We hope that religion and the influences of church leaders, zealots, etc. will not influence a President, but the fact is, it absolutely does. Huckabee will see things his evangelical way. He takes things on faith, rejecting things that are as real as, well...evolution. Romney (whose religion counts on a biblical "update" hand delivered to a high school-drop out by an angel about a hundred years ago) will see things his way....and his church's way. Romney's religion has a tax exempt building, which means that YOU had some hand in funding it, that does not allow entry by anyone except those within their particular cult. Scary stuff. Very scary.

All this leaves us at a point where we are getting rid of a guy whose faith has created war, death, severe national debt, scandal, and a crazed notion of social superiority and social stratafication, giving us choices that may be even worse in terms of disasters a new leader may drag us through based on his or her world view.

It's time to be level headed about all this. We can't expect this, of course. But we need to pay attention none the less.

11 12 07

Lately in the news it's been reported that Bill Clinton complains that Hillary has been ganged up on by "the boys". And George Bush the daddy has complained that the world should get off the back of his boy, George Bush the smaller. George Bush the smaller has been directly responsible for the killing of thousands, the wounding and maiming of tens of thousands, the ruination of the nation's economy, the most fractured levels of civility in American political history, and George wants the world to ease off? And Bill wants his wife to be the queen of America, and he wants a free pass for her to ease onto the throne with no challenge from the other wannabes? Do we get this right? Is the sense of entitlement so great amongst these elitists that they just want to have the crown bestowed with no trouble? No fuss? No criticism? Do these cowards and cry-babies actually think we don't notice their smallness? In the face of debt, war, energy, division, death, misery, rotting infrastructure, taxation etc., do these people want to just fly around on taxpaid aircraft, have their champagne and Lobster Newberg brought to them by gloved hands and wave the queenly wave to the rest of us who have to foot the bill of their childish perceptions?

11 7 09

We see a religious leader is spending some of his tax free funds and inserting his opinion into politics. Avoiding the idea that anyone who has a difference of opinion is paying taxes to make up for those taxes Robertson is NOT paying while he tells the tax paying world his choice of political leadership, and suggesting Pat Robertson only THINKS he has influence on the thinking crowd, here is my prioritized list (I am independent) in terms of "endorsing" candidates for Commander in Chief;

1. Joe Biden (statesman, foreign affairs expert)

2. Chris Dodd (statesman, domestic affairs architect)

3. Barack Obama (politician)

4. Ron Paul (federal minimalist)

5. John Edwards (yellow dog southern social worker)

6. Fred Thompson (Actor/politician)

7. Mike Huckabee (decency)

8. John McCain (warrior, Bush act-alike)

next to last: Rudolph Giuliani (showman, war hawk who has never done military service)

last: Hillary Clinton (feminist activist socialist)

11 5 07

Almost time for taxes again. Or at least federal income taxes. And in my state the state of Georgia piles on for state income taxes. I just sent the check in for ad valorem taxes to the county. And last month I made the property tax payment to the county commisioner so I can live in my home. Again. Here's my point. Taxes rise because we pay them. We're so proud of ourselves for getting those obligations paid that we don't realize the thinking that persists on the other side of the issue. The people who impose those taxes are human, and more importantly are beneficiaries of the taxes we pay. Thus they tell themselves that, since we paid this time with imperceptible complaint, we can and will pay more. So taxes go up. And damned if he wasn't right. New schemes arise to extract more. We're basically farm animals, alive for the purposes of paying those who herd us. And we elect a president who, on auspices of less government/fewer taxes, starts a war that costs trillions, establishes a chain of events that will inflate the dollars we have, make the dollars we earn less valuable on the world market, and bail out at tax paid expense those who try to make billions.....compliments of you. The tax payer. You pay. You fear. You're afraid the big bad IRS guy will come and get your house if you don't. And he WILL. So you will pay. Your vote will be cast for someone who promised to do things that cost money. YOUR money. And you will pay more. And if it ever comes time for you to be beneficiary, perhaps Social Security which is a separate tax imposed on you for your own good, which is raided to conduct war and is replaced by IOU's backed by a government so laden with debt YOU the payer will not be able to retire the debt, nor your children, nor theirs, excuses will be made and laws will be passed to give you less than promised, and later than expected. Because YOU, my friend, live in fear.

Time to chunk some tea into the harbor? Want to know why that won't happen? YOU don't have the courage. Want to bet you'll be voting for Clinton the socialist or Giulianni the war monger? Want to know who will pay?

10 16 07

Our Oval Office Hero is throwing about terms such as "World War Three". By now, even the most foolishly inclined, which is to say not all Republicans, have seen the light where Bush is concerned, and those that haven't stand a real good chance of being in their final term of office. So what about this so called "credit crunch"? When gas get's scarce, I pay more. When tomatoes are out of season, I pay more. When housing isn't built, I pay more. And when money gets scarce for borrowers, the Fed lowers rates and makes money available for less??? Does this make sense to you? This kind of foolish move is not lost on the world either. And the world is loaning us money while expecting a modest return. And when the world loans us their money, they must change their currency to dollars.... dollars which are weaker and subject to higher inflation, thanks to .... uh ...the actions by the Fed. WHAT? Anybody else smell a Bush rat in all this? Does it make sense to have a GDP of 13 trillion, a debt of 9 trillion, a savings rate of ZERO, and expect the world to have economic respect for us? Answer.....not a chance in hell.

9 17 07

A disappointing week to begin. First, a Florida student learns what free speech in America means as he is tasered, then physically dragged away from a political discussion by several uniformed officers. He should now realize that speaking out is only for the sanctioned and privileged. Nothing like education, I always say. Stay in school and learn your place, young man. You weren't born a Bush or Clinton. Study the tax structure and pay your share....that's what America expects of you. And it seems that Asia is pretty much counting on a Federal Reserve rate reduction today, due in a few hours. Of course those who pay attention know that if the fed rate is reduced, Bernanke will spend the next two years trying to live down such a stupid decision even as Greenspan warns him against in his just released book The Age of Turbulence, but then Bernanke has learned what the free speech student has now hopefully learned: best not to go against authority. Best to make the powerful look good. They do, after all, control the brownshirts. To hell with the long term economy. And finally, unless I misunderstand, the only female running for President under the Democratic moniker is proposing that we as citizens be compelled to buy health insurance from private insurers so that our health is ...... uh..... cared for. Being one with health insurance already, I look forward to the enhanced health care that will result since already I'm confounded by copay rules, test rules, insurance company rejections, substitutions, preconditions, more rules, prescription rules, no coverage of certain body parts, maladies and peices....all for the bargain price of just at six hundred dollars per month. And it only takes a year to get into the doctor's office. Happy day. We finally have a health care plan on the table.

9 12 07

If you need a primer on the price to the American psychology of current war activity, here is an excellent article; WAR, PSYCHOLOGY and TIME

9 11 07

I was in Oklahoma on a Federal job with the V.A. when the Trade Towers were leveled. I was unable to leave Oklahoma for several days and hospital security was tightened even to the extent of blocking entryways with earthmovers and heavy equipment. I could not turn in my rental car nor could I drive it home to Atlanta. Gasoline in Tulsa was reported (prophetically?) at six dollars per gallon. Here we are years later, years into a tangentially associated "terror" war with a specific Islamic country mired in their religious bickering. Our President over these years has been stunningly foolish, and his choices for sub level leadership have been likewise. The Vice President has been a fool, has made foolish statements along the way, and remains the fool. However.....yesterday it was clear that General David Patraeus, and to a lesser degree Ambassador Crocker was making the case that among all the choices America has concerning Iraq, a country which supplied NONE of the Trade Center attackers or planners, the most viable of all choices, all bad, might be to continue the policies of giving our lives, blood and money to that country until it comes to its senses politically....if it ever does. A case can be made, given our own ineffective political process, the dearth of civility stinking up the American Capital now for many years under the vacationing eye of the Bush child, that political solution is going to take time, money, and sacrifice. Here's hoping we do not sacrifice America herself for the benefit of an ungrateful, ignorant, religious-crazed super right wing bevy of cultish sects whose primary salutation to American efforts in their behalf might just be, "get out". The alternatives offered by men of temperate minds, primarily known as Democrats, to abandon the folly of the Bush-Iraqi misadventure in favor of re-embracing the pursuit of 911 operatives, including the Bin Laden figurehead, will become louder as the price rises, our military weakens, American blood spills and the usual political foolishness hits the nightly news. We as a nation of limited and diminishing resources can make but one choice from here, and this experienced General who reports and owes allegiance to the Bush responsible for the whole of the Iraqi fiasco in the first place is advising us that one choice, generally speaking, should be to stay an Iraqi course. God help us, it appears to this observer that we have no choice but do exactly that given alternatives and a lack of our own political wisdom at leadership levels. May history treat this political leadership appropriately.

9 1 07

An interesting delimma for politicians, isn't it? The Bush Administration is going all FDR about poor poor folks who can't afford their mortgages. Homes built in my particular neighborhood in the last five years have been six times larger and ten times more expensive than the existing neighborhood values. And builders have sold every one of those very expensive castle sized homes before construction was even complete. Based on what I hear from realtors in my non-California area (if you can believe what realtors say to begin with), it's my observation that buyers have stretched to buy considerably beyond their means, using borrowed money, often with minimum or no down payment. We who live within our means opting to exist in smaller boxes of modest expense, try saving a little money for retirement or a rainy day while living the non-moviestar existence. Meanwhile...all those iffy mortgages were bundled up and sold to investors from all over the world in large Stock Exchange styled packages. The months passed, inflation rose (food and fuel), but home builders over-built inventories as speculators and wild-eyed home buyers attempted to make a buck on ever rising real estate. The Fed ratcheted up the Fed rate slowly to fight inflation, thus those who saved their money got a modest return on their savings, while those who spent borrowed money paid a bit more as their variable rates rose. Now....to the moment. Millions of spendthrift millionaire wannabes living in homes far beyond their need can't pay. The glut of inventory takes a toll on prices and the number of rising non payers lead to a drying up of available funds. Enter our hero. The Bush administration, and no doubt the ever heart-bleeding Democrats want to bail out these poor poor spendthrifts by making cheap easy tax-backed guaranteed refinanced loans to some, not all, of these folks living month to month, on the edge, no savings, no sense, no worry. This diminishes the income on savings since this money competes directly with the opportunity for thriftly saved funds to earn a modest return. The lesson? Spend like a drunken federally backed no-bid contractor with a cost-plus war contract since thrift and long term planning obviously takes a distant second place to spending uncontrollably. And not to worry. The Government will bail you out....even though the Government is itself NINE TRILLION DOLLARS in debt. Is this a crazy country or what?

Aug 27, 07

Energy. Energy energy energy. Our national prosperity depends on it. Our civilization, economics, survival, depend on it.

Leadership. Leadership, leadership, leadership. Energy research and acquisition depends on it. Our civilization, economics, survival, depend on it.

Arrogance. Ego. Privilege. Connection. Dogma. Scandal. Bad judgment. Deceipt. Self righteousness. Bush has depended on it.

I'm not convinced that we have much left to work with. If you think about things, and most folks avoid thinking about unpleasant things, our national gas tank is empty, we are entrenched in our own domestic and economic illusions, religious dogma is now infused into social directive (Bush is at war because God "told him" to go to war), we allow immigrants to do our labor, we allow the Chinese to do our manufacturing, we've given transportation over to the Japanese, (Toyota overtook GM just last month). Also Germans, Koreans, etc. Our products are becoming second rate. Our education is second rate. Even our medical underpinnings, which now rate 37th in the world, have become a money device having little to do with "care". Our science and technology is increasingly exported to the Scandinavians and others, our credit markets have to be propped up to save the politically connected from their own bad judgment, which sets the stage for more of the same. Our debt is not controllable without inflationary measures (we will print dollars to pay war debt, social security obligations, etc), we have no good options in the Middle East, we have lost world authority and respect, we have lost the moral high ground (we now torture people, tap their phones etc), we have basically forfeited the purposes of the constitution. The very wealthy/connected are becoming the sole source of our leadership pool, and the electorate is so sound asleep that it allows the Supreme Court to emplace a fool, the privileged son of a President, into our highest office. For seven years, war, debt, one scandal after another. The Dem party vote will likely go to the wife of an ex President setting precedent for our highest office to be available moslty and exclusively to palace occupants. The cherry topping is nuclear proliferation in a world filled with people desperate to destroy us, themselves and anyone not of their religious view.  I used to think we had collective wisdom. Now I'm convinced we have no wisdom at all.....only an individual and personal proclivity to get fat, live easy, and spew opinion. I hope against hope I don't qualify in those regards. It occurs to me, though, that anyone who would actually want to assume a position of responsibility in the throngs of such a mixture of national discord must either be egomaniacal, unaware, crazy, or a combination of those.

Aug 16, 07

Today's headlines: Stocks in the U.S. were suffering another round of steep losses Thursday as financial fears continued to encircle the globe. By Robert Holmes TheStreet.com Staff Reporter 8/16/2007 1:34 PM EDT

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Here's a scenario: let's say a guy, we'll call him R. B., owns the media, the brokerage houses, the Wall Street Reporter rag and a few odds and ends. Now let's say some schmuck (here's where YOU come in) works all his life mining coal or teaching school or what-have-you and schmuck saves a hundred thousand or two the hard way over forty years. Not too shabby for a schmuck with a B.S. in mostly bs. Then the schmuck wants to invest because the MEDIA, a wholey owned subsidiary of R.B. Enterprises, says it's the thing to do. He invests and the SCHMUCK pays the broker who works for R.B. and who originated a new financial issue charging ...say....oh...eight percent admin and origination fees, which was hidden in the opening price. Then the market tanks a little and the new issue appears at less than issue price, the schmuck scares off within a year or two of listening to nagging schmuck wife during which time R.B. has held and invested Schmuck's money in the First National Schmuck Bank of American Dreams, Wishes and Imported Products. Schmuck sells and R.B. Broker and Investments gets a percentage of the sale price. Sound possible? Not only is that possible, but the Bush administration has been so friendly to the Robber Barron that there is no recourse but for schmuck to ever be anything but schmuck his entire schmuck life. The Federal Government is run by the ex CEO of R.B. Enterprises. It's the European way. It's the way of the middle ages. Not possible you say? Then I say, boy do I have some new issues for you to buy. A sure thing too.....long term of course. And I have a candidate for president for you to drive down to the polls in your R.B. Import, fueled by R.B. gas, and mindlessly cast your meaningless vote, too. You'll love him. He is the son of one of our most beloved patriots from the R.B. family. We know he's great, because it says so right here in print. That'll be ten years of your life, Schm....uh.....sir. Here's your change in threats of drafting your offspring to save America from the madding hoards pissed off because they've been offensively bombed by R.B. weapons against mass destruction. Do come again. And don't forget to vote the candidate of YOUR choice. Schmuck.

8 14 07

Do you pay attention to the financial news? If not, probably just as well. If so, pretty grim, eh? So many Americans are doing anything and everything they can to be wealthy without producing anything. The big money boys try to do this with hedge funds, and the hedge funds went straight to hell when the sub primers defaulted en masse, threatening the credit market....and the FED kicked in 94 billion and attempted to bail them out (as did the EU in Dusseldorf for the same reasons). So the FED will bail out the rich, the folks holding subprime hedges will get screwed (their own fault for throwing caution to the wind), the folks losing equity will lose homes (their own fault for over-reaching), the taxpayer will get hit up big-time in a bailout failure (if they voted Bush, their own fault) meanwhile true credit markets are thwarted if FED is willing to stick billions of tax-backed paper-credit bucks (do you know how the money is injected into the economy? if not, shame on you)  into the market for free and bail out the rich to prop up credit markets. Thus why would the price of credit rise? If anything it might actually fall by the hand of FED if the economy is perceived to be heading toward recession/depression. So much for supply and demand curves. Meanwhile American bridges, roads and pipes are rusting, the domestic energy tank is approaching empty, the debt meter is up to seven trillion, the forever lost war machine is mired in a billion dollar per week game of raghead politics (themselves currently on vacation except for the bomb-chunkers), farm producers are only willing to pay a couple bucks an hour to pick lettuce all day in the summer sun, Mexicans leap over the southern fence to do it, meth labs are springing up all over, and Bush does the jig up to Kennebunkport (all this is on his watch).  I'm betting a great economic awakening is about to occur. It might be a REALLY big shocker. The free lunch counter (privileged only) is about to go broke.

The good news is that those Amercians who think they're movie stars, deserving of a new Lexus every year along with an upstairs maid.... these folks may be picking lettuce all day in the CHINESE summer sun for a crumb of bread. And folks like me will have the attitude of tough tittie doo doo for these spoiled rotten myopics. Doesn't look good. Hope you're ready for it. I give it two to ten years to get really nasty. And I truly hope I'm wrong.   Best advice: save your pennies, hope I'm full of crap and you never need them. Below is the best article I've ever read on the intricacies of modern American economics. Most readers won't understand a word of it. Those who do understand it will likely agree with every word above. Those who don't care might want to explore the produce-picking trade;

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entral banks' easy virtue, easy money

By Julian Delasantellis

There's an old story about the late British statesman Winston Churchill at a party. Probably on one of those many nights where never in the field of human excess had so much cognac, brandy and scotch been consumed by a person who historians now say was not an alcoholic, he staggered up to a socialite matron and posed a question:

Churchill: "Madam, would you sleep with me for 5 million pounds?" (In the 1930s, when the British pound was worth more than twice as much to the US dollar than it is now, this was a particularly impressive sum over which to surrender one's virtue.) Woman: "My goodness, Mr Churchill ... Well, I suppose ... we would have to discuss terms, of course." Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for 5 pounds?" Woman: "Mr Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!" Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price."

Thanks to last week's events in the financial markets, we now know the price at which the world's three largest central banks, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, will drop their posturings about the importance of setting good examples regarding promoting sound banking, lending and credit usage policies and put their principles up for sale. If the world's stock markets lose, oh, say, US$2 trillion of valuation or so in a month, well, it looks like it's at that point they start "discussing terms". Since March, I've written a number of times in Asia Times Online about what has come to be known as the "subprime crisis", but it was at the end of that first March 6 article, Rocking the subprime house of cards, where I first postulated that this situation would eventually degenerate to a point where central banks and bankers would be called on to intervene. This happened last week. The Fed and other central banks put up a good fight for their virtue. After the Fed's August 7 meeting, its board of governors produced a statement aggressively optimistic about the state of the US economy and contemptuously dismissive about the possibility that the subprime crisis might represent a potential cloud or two on this relentlessly blue horizon. After reading it, one might have wondered if chairman Ben Bernanke needed his manic-depressive prescription refilled.

The next day, as markets reacted against the Fed statement and the attendant realization that no immediate central bank help was on the horizon, the Fed and the world's other major central banks reversed themselves and went full-throttle floozy for the rest of the week. According to Reuters, by the end of last week the world's major central banks had put more than $325 billion of extra liquidity into the system; the Fed's contribution to that total is said to be in the neighborhood of more than $100 billion.

The US media report stories like this in much the same way they report baseball statistics or Hollywood blood-alcohol test results - lots of coverage but little real understanding. It is only in knowing the mechanics and causation of these events that one can understand just how serious this crisis is now becoming.

The media verb of choice for these procedures is that the Fed has "injected" reserves into the banking system, but this does not mean this exercise is such that you have bankers reporting to Dr Bernanke's office, wherein they lower their Hugo Boss suit trousers to receive a hypodermic syringe's bolus of bucks into their buttocks.

The core method in which the US Federal Reserve exercises day-to-day control over the economy in its purview is through operations that buy and sell debt securities in what is called the Federal Funds market; these are called open market operations. If a central bank wants to withdraw reserves from the banking system, it will sell from their portfolios a quantity of government debt securities into the market; when the buyer clicks a button on his trading terminal and transfers the purchase price of the securities via the miracle of electronic funds transfer (EFT) out of the institution's account into that of the central bank's, the supply of money decreases in the banking system by an amount concomitant with the worth of the securities.

Many of the transactions in this market are repurchase agreements, or repos, wherein one party, usually a large money-center bank, agrees, for a fee, to lend specific securities to another party with a need to fund its reserve requirements for a short period, sometimes as short as one night. The process is reversed when, as happened last week, the central bank wants to increase the supply of money in the banking system. There it buys securities; when it pays for them via EFT, then the money supply gets increased in a similar fashion. In the United States, this process is effected through the Federal Reserve's ongoing relationship with 21 large commercial banks called "primary dealers".

In the 1980s, when central bankers worshipped pint-sized monetarist economic guru Milton Friedman as the living god of wealth, the purpose of these operations was to set and meet a defined policy objective as to where the absolute quantity of money in the economy should be. These days, central bankers are more likely to target a previously specified interest rate; when the media report the results of a Federal Reserve or other central bank's interest-rate decision, this is this rate to which they are referring.

Since an interest rate is, in essence, the price of money, as it goes up so does the cost of borrowing money from a lender, and as it goes down the reverse. This is how the world's interest rates act as the world's economic throttle.

Right now, the target interest rate for funds lent and borrowed in this market is 5.25% in the US; on many days the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, operating on instructions from Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, DC, goes into the market either to add required liquidity or to sop up and remove excess liquidity, to keep the target interest rate, called the Federal Funds rate, in line.

It is not at all uncommon for the Federal Funds rate to vary from the target rate. Around the Christmas holiday season, the system is frequently short of reserves, as people empty their bank accounts to buy presents; this was particularly true during the holiday season of 1999, when people emptied their bank accounts both to buy presents and because of media reports warning that middle America would soon resemble Fred Flintstone's Bedrock City after the biblical-level devastation soon to be visited on the heartland by Year 2000. Likewise, in the spring, as people deposit their income-tax refund checks, bank reserves are plentiful.

This week, the Federal Reserve noticed that the Federal Funds rate had jumped well beyond its target of 5.25% toward the low and middle 6% range. Other world central banks noticed similar increases beyond their target ranges; in Europe, after news that America's subprime problems had jumped the Atlantic and had been found in European financial institutions such as BNP Paribas and Germany's IKB group, rates had moved to 4.5%, a half-point beyond their target range.

The most common factor that traditionally explains rising interest rates is economic growth; more companies and individuals are borrowing from banks to finance their economic expansion plans. This was not the case last week; borrowings from the system were stable.

The problem wasn't the demand for money; it was the supply. The subprime-mortgage banking crisis, which a year or so ago began in far-distant fields of verdant identical pastel highrise condominiums in such places as San Diego and southern Florida, had finally spread into the absolute core of the modern financial system, this interbank market for overnight reserves.

Calling this entire thing the "subprime crisis" evokes the incorrect notion that the entirety of the "storm and stress" of what the world's markets are going through these days is centered on those poor sods sitting in their overpriced houses on which they've stopped making payments, awaiting the morning when the local county sheriff knocks on their door to put all their rented furniture on the sidewalk when evicting them.

This is where the crisis started but, in reality, like a toy balloon filled with too much air that tears apart at a random point on the balloon's surface, the bursting of the credit/liquidity balloon that so inflated this decade could have begun at any number of the places where irrational exuberance-greed had affected allegedly rational economic actors.

So, out there in the hinterlands of economic activity, subprime borrowers are not paying their mortgages. The people who bought these mortgages, rolled and bundled up into interest-bearing bonds called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) , now find that they have what is delicately called a "liquidity crisis"; in real-people-speak, they have no income. They are no longer receiving the CDO coupon interest that derived from the mortgage interest payments.

That's a problem both for them and for the institutions they might have borrowed the money from to get the funding to buy the CDOs. If they're not receiving any income payments from the CDO owners (because the CDO owners aren't receiving the mortgage interest payments from the subprime borrowers), then soon they'll be suffering their own "liquidity crisis".

And so on and so on, on and on up the finance food chain until you get to late last week, the arrival of the crying baby of this crisis at the doorstep of the interbank market for short-term reserve finance. The problem has been particularly exacerbated by the current trend in finance to manage balance-sheet assets and liabilities aggressively; in essence, at every level the financial system is now continually doubling down on every bet it makes. If you've got an asset worth x, you might use it as collateral to borrow 5x or 10x, and a pretty similar process governs lending as well.

In many of my articles here I have noted that the key component of modern international finance has been the massive "wave of liquidity" that has buoyed prices on everything from private-equity buyouts to 1950s-era TV-show lunch boxes on eBay.

The wave of liquidity is one of the central arguments for those who believe that the entire subprime crisis is just a tempest in a teapot, that it will have little or no effect on the "real" economy. At a news conference last Wednesday, US President George W Bush opined, "Another factor one has got to look at is the amount of liquidity in the system. In other words, is there enough liquidity to enable markets to be able to correct? And I'm told there is enough liquidity in the system to enable markets to correct."

The essential assumption in that sentiment is that the amount of liquidity, of money and credit, in the system is fixed, as if it's all safely stored away in neat little shrink-wrapped bundles or something. The very concept of a credit crunch, illustrated in last week's markets, proves this false. We are now seeing that much of the world's liquidity wave can disappear with the same effortless ease with which it was created. Specifically, as the market values of CDOs decline, less can be lent out using them as collateral. With globalized finance meaning that subprimes are now being found in so many more portfolios than previously expected, such as those of BNP and IKB, the process of credit contraction immediately spreads across the planet, much as the global equity-market selloffs are illustrating.

A special factor that spooked the Federal Funds market late in the week, and probably the one that most directly led to the intervention of the Fed and other central banks, was that this market's players can push back from the table any time they want.

The transactions in the Federal Funds markets carry no type of federal deposit-insurance coverage or protection. Thus if you make a deal with another player to be repaid in 24 hours, and if your counterparty goes belly-up in that period, you get right into line at the courthouse door with all the other institutions to which the dearly departed bank owed money; an intended 24-hour transaction might turn into one that lasts a decade, with you paying hefty lawyers' fees the entire time.

Amazingly enough, late last week such gross fear spread through the markets that there were concerns that one or more primary dealers, institutions such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse, the most cerulean names in US blue-chip finance, might fail to roll up their window-shades and open their doors for business the next morning. Rather than make uncovered loans to these potential cordon bleu deadbeats, other players got up from the table and pulled in their lending to this market. That produced the shortage of lendable reserves in this market that caused the rise in short-term interest rates, and was what drove the central bankers to ride in and attempt their first of what could be many rescue attempts.

Elvis Presley was more likely singing about women than international financial-market liquidity when he sang the title track for a movie in 1967, but the principle is the same. Easy come, easy go.

Illustrative of the fact that, yes, the subprime crisis is having an effect in the "real" economy is the rather anomalous behavior currently going on in the commodity markets, particularly for petroleum products. (See my April 4 article Crude: Barrels of fun to crack you up and the April 24 article Why oil chiefs are feelin' groovy, on last spring's activity in the oil markets.)

In late spring and early summer, it seemed that oil and product futures prices were on a one-way trajectory straight to the moon and stars, as shortages in US refinery capacity were putting tremendous upward pressure on these markets. However, since August 1, oil futures prices have plunged 11% on US markets. Much like equities, there's just not enough money and liquidity around to support the previously high prices anymore; beyond that, there's an extended message that the markets are trying to deliver, that soon a lot of people are going to be focusing their driving efforts more on short trips to the local unemployment office than to some far-flung mall.

The response of Bush and other economic conservatives (such as the ones he appointed to the US Federal Reserve Board) to the rescue of the subprime market now underwater has been in essence similar to his response to the rescue of New Orleans when it was underwater from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. No.

Late last week, a possible solution to the subprime crisis was raised; the US semi-official mortgage guarantor agencies, the Federal Home Loan and Mortgage Corp (called Freddie Mac in the markets) and the Federal National Mortgage Association (similarly called Fannie Mae), suggested they might be willing to buy up at risk subprime paper in the market, thus allowing the homeowners to stay in their homes. More important for Wall Street, it would take the now-radioactive subprime CDOs off its hands and inject more liquidity into the system. Bush sniffed at the suggestion; he said the two agencies had to be first "reformed" of the rampant corruption that economic conservatives always seem to find in public agencies.

In general, economic conservatives say the role of government in ameliorating this crisis should be, at most, virtually non-existent.

Much like pregnant ghetto teenagers, they say that those suffering in the subprime crisis are there wholly through their own misguided actions, specifically, their greed. No government actions, including anything by the Federal Reserve, should be taken on their behalf. They must suffer the pain that is the rightful and just consequence of their imprudent actions. An editorial in Saturday's Wall Street Journal summarized this philosophy very succinctly. No one wants to see someone lose his home to foreclosure. But many of those most at risk bought their homes with little or no money down, and so have very little at stake economically. Bringing in the feds to bail them out would send precisely the wrong message - that risky or overly aggressive borrowing will be rewarded by the government rather than punished in the marketplace. To the extent that bad loans were made, the market needs to clear, not be propped up by federal aid programs ...

With the current market turmoil, Mr Bernanke faces his first big test as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The biggest favor he could do for himself and the markets is not to give in to the temptation to do favors for Wall Street or anyone else, and to remain focused on his price-stability mandate. What this editorial is trying to say is that the markets must be disabused of the notion that some institutions are, like those that lent billions to hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, or the banks that lent to Mexico in 1982, "too big to fail". Much as the ghetto teenager who loses her welfare benefits and so, like a modern-day Flying Dutchman of the service sector, is sentenced to push a broom at McDonald's for all eternity, those who make mistakes must forever pay for their actions.

Warnings against the dangers of excessive credit utilization are also a regular part of Federal Reserve communications with the general public. In a publication titled Building Wealth, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas provides these dictums. Liabilities are your debts. Debt reduces net worth. Plus, the interest you pay on debt, including credit-card debt, is money that cannot be saved or invested - it's just gone. Debt is a tool to be used wisely for such things as buying a house. If not used wisely, debt can easily get out of hand ...

Develop a budget and stick to it. Save money so you're prepared for unforeseen circumstances. You should have at least three to six months of living expenses stashed in your rainy-day savings account, because as the poet [Henry Wadsworth] Longfellow put it, "Into each life some rain must fall." When faced with a choice of financing a purchase, it may be a better financial decision to choose a less expensive model of the same product and save or invest the difference. Pay off credit-card balances monthly. This is all sound, prudent and conservative financial advice; the underlying cause of the subprime crisis is that, for much of this decade, America's financial elite has basically not practiced any of it. Do as I say, be cautious and careful, not as I do; I'm borrowing and lending like a drunken sailor with free tickets to a beer fest. With this as intellectual background, you might have expected the conservative-libertarian economic community to have decried the Federal Reserve money-market interventions. After all, if a few or more primary dealers had imprudent connections, even if they were once, twice or more removed, with the subprime market, their insolvency and bankruptcy could only have a proper disciplining effect on the market. The example of their misery and penury will act to ensure that future market participants eschew the next upcoming financial-market inanity.

Not on your life. While it's true that these economic conservatives are cradle-to-the-grave misanthropes who decry everything from government funding of infant inoculations to Meals on Wheels for elderly shut-ins, still they are proving themselves to be a lot more sanguine about the prospect of government assistance if the assistance is directed at members of their own elite class.

As former Ronald Reagan-era (1980s) economic official and current CNBC economic commentator, Larry Kudlow, put it in his National Review Online blog, "The Fed and other central banks are prudently injecting $131 billion of new cash to 'facilitate the orderly functioning' of markets. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has the story right."

Of course he has. Principles and ideologies are fine on a sunny day, but the subprime crisis is now threatening core institutions of the financial system that has rewarded the elite so generously - beliefs be damned, Bernanke, get in there and save our portfolios. For all the "financial education" the US Federal Reserve provides the masses, and all the verbiage about what cautious, exacting, circumspect bankers they are, this crisis, like all the rest that came before them and all those that are to follow, prove that they are, at crunch time, just Wall Streetwalkers, always available to compromise their principles to pleasure their masters.

In 1925, George Orwell lyrically described an encounter he had with a member of the sisterhood of the oldest profession in the world.

When I was young and had no sense In far-off Mandalay

I lost my heart to a Burmese girl As lovely as the day.

Her skin was gold, her hair was jet, Her teeth were ivory;

I said, "For twenty silver pieces, Maiden, sleep with me."

She looked at me, so pure, so sad, The loveliest thing alive,

And in her lisping, virgin voice, Stood out for twenty-five.

That's also sage counsel for Bernanke. As the credit crisis continues to deepen, and as calls rise for a 50-basis-point cut in Federal Reserve interest rates, he can always provide an effective palliative for his conscience by saying he "stood out for twenty-five".

8 6 07

I can scarcely contain my frustration. The headlines today read:

Taliban Threatens More Kidnappings Guardian Unlimited -From AP By RAHIM FAIEZ AP Writer GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AP) - The Taliban will keep kidnapping foreigners in Afghanistan, a purported spokesman for the group said Monday

It seems after a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives, mostly boys under the age of 28, we come to the same place we came to after WW1. The Germans were "beat". The war won. The Huns defeated. But wait! WW2...the Germans again? Hitler? Social atrocities? Hundreds of thousands were to die....a four year conflict totally putting normal life on hold around the world. And here we are again. We've putzed around with a know-nothing Whitehouse, wasted our resources, listened to the excuses of the world's worst leadership, watched as department head after department head is replaced by more of the same (because the direction of the head of the department heads stays the same failed course). So now we learn the lesson....AGAIN....uh....MAYBE. If a poisoness snake bites, a slap on its tail will not prevent it from biting again. It has to be killed. But our politicians are weak. They watch the polls. They live the good life on YOUR money. They shift position from here to there and authorize WAR without a declaration of purpose, without guaging the wisdom of the Commander in Chief. So now, we face a long and probably bloody fight to kill these right-wing extremists who want us to pray to Allah, wear burkas and live as they command, rocking dutifully toward Mecca on que, hating Jews and even other Allah dudes, along with all the right-wing religion you can digest. (Not a whole lot different in tone than the average right wing Southern Baptist it seems.) If you voted for Bush in either of the past two elections you are deserving for part of the credit for this. If you vote Republican again, you will be rewarding a political party for the world's greatest foreign policy failure. But for now, it's not looking like the options are very attractive.

More headlines to come, I'm certain.

7 23 07

Yikes. Anderson Cooper, ex MOLE gameshow host and son of famously-rich Gloria Vanderbilt, tried a bit of You-Tube populist fare to make a show of the Democratic presidential hopefuls. It might be time to check the temperature of both camps. We can fairly clearly identify the personalities who have no hope, leaving the two or three who have a real shot at running against Republican hopefuls, all of whom being seriously out-matched by none-of-the-above in current polls. It seems Hillary Clinton has the alleged lead even though Edwards leads in the early state caucuses (not sure how that works). She may keep that lead since being ahead doesn't seem to determine who eventually wins. A giant of a man like Joe Biden seems to gain no traction with his "time to tell the truth" mantra. His Iraq solution, probably the very one that will eventually become reality, is mostly ignored. Mr. Biden will be my choice (if the field stays as is) even if he doesn't make the ballot, however I know the truth isn't what the usual voter wants to hear. The usual voter wants to know how much larger a pie slice ("pie" being the particular interest of the voter whether money, health-care, civil marriage privileges. yadda yadda) will be available to him or her as a result of electing this candidate or that. Which NEVER happens post election. There seems to be no debate about the realities of increasing population, diminished energy, national indebtedness, ongoing idiotic policy-making, the inevitable taxes that will be levied to pay for promises which cannot possibly be kept etc. On the Republican side, there seems to be such ignorance that an overview of the field is a waste of time. Romney has the look, possibly the polish of a prez. And given a run against Hillary, Mr. Romney could possibly win the contest. But the Republicans don't seem happy unless a particular brand of religionism, right wingism, anti-evolutionism, moronic stem-cell perspectivism etc runs roughshod over the governed. So the election, unless salvaged by Al Gore fresh off a Nobel Prize tour deciding his own sanity and happiness be sacrificed by leading the nation from the edge of the abyss from which the Bush Administration places all its bets mostly because God talks directly to George. A more interesting election than this one is hopefully a rarity.

7 20 07

By Keith Olbermannl, Anchor, 'Countdown' © 2007 MSNBC Interactive

MSNBC 8:39 p.m. ET July 19, 2007

It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons, of history.

A country — a government — a military machine — can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday. It can get thousands of its people killed. It can risk the safety of its citizens. It can destroy the fabric of its nation. But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain or even gain power. The Bush administration has opened this Pandora’s Box about Iraq. It has found its scapegoats: Hillary Clinton and us.

The lies and terror tactics with which it deluded this country into war — they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place — the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process — that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

The criminal lack of planning for the war — the total “jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly” tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein — that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

The utter, blinkered idiocy of “staying the course,” of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time, and a third and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed — the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake — that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever. It isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault.

The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total “Alice Through the Looking Glass” quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida — it isn’t Mr. Bush’s fault! The fault, brought down, as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter by a nearly anonymous undersecretary of defense, has tonight been laid on the doorstep of... Sen. Hillary Clinton and, by extension, at the doorstep of every American — the now-vast majority of us — who have dared to criticize this war or protest it or merely ask questions about it or simply, plaintively, innocently, honestly, plead, “Don’t take my son; don’t take my daughter.” Sen. Clinton has been sent — and someone has leaked to The Associated Press — a letter, sent in reply to hers asking if there exists an actual plan for evacuating U.S. troops from Iraq. This extraordinary document was written by an undersecretary of defense named Eric Edelman. “Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq,” Edelman writes, “reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”

Edelman adds: “Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks.” A spokesman for the senator says Mr. Edelman’s remarks are “at once both outrageous and dangerous.” Those terms are entirely appropriate and may, in fact, understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life and all that our fighting men and women are risking, have risked, and have lost, in Iraq. After the South was defeated in our Civil War, the scapegoat was Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the ideas of the “Lost Cause” and “Jim Crow” were born. After the French were beaten by the Prussians in 1870 and 1871, it was the imaginary “Jewish influence” in the French Army general staff, and there was born 30 years of self-destructive anti-Semitism, culminating in the horrific Dreyfus case. After the Germans lost the First World War, it was the “back-stabbers and profiteers” at home, on whose lives the National Socialists rose to prominence in the succeeding decades and whose accused membership eventually wound up in torture chambers and death camps.

And after the generation before ours, and leaders of both political parties, escalated and re-escalated and carpet-bombed and re-carpet-bombed Vietnam, it was the protest movement and Jane Fonda and — as late as just three years ago — Sen. John Kerry who were assigned the kind of blame with which no rational human being could concur, and yet which still, across vast sections of our political landscape, resonates unchallenged and accepted. And now Mr. Bush, you have picked out your own Jefferson Davis, your own Dreyfus, your own “profiteer” — your own scapegoat. Not for the sake of this country. Not for the sake of Iraq. Not even for the sake of your own political party. But for the sake of your own personal place in history. But in reaching for that place, you have guaranteed yourself tonight not honor, but infamy. In fact, you have condemned yourself to a place among that remarkably small group of Americans whom Americans cannot forgive: those who have sold this country out and who have willingly declared their enmity to the people at whose pleasure they supposedly serve. A scapegoat, sir, might be forgivable, if you hadn’t just happened to choose a prospective presidential nominee of the opposition party.

And the accusation of spreading “enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia” might be some day atoned for, if we all didn’t know — you included, and your generals and the Iraqis — that we are leaving Iraq, and sooner rather than later, and we are doing it even if to do so requires, first, that you must be impeached and removed as president of the United States, sooner rather than later.

You have set this government at war against its own people and then blamed those very people when they say, “Enough.” And thus it crystallizes, Mr. Bush. When Civil War Gen. Ambrose Burnside ordered a disastrous attack on Fredericksburg in which 12,000 of his men were killed, he had to be physically restrained from leading the next charge himself. After the First Lord of the British Admiralty, Winston Churchill, authored and enabled the disastrous Gallipoli campaign that saw a quarter-million Allied soldiers cut down in the First World War, Churchill resigned his office and took a commission as a front-line officer in the trenches of France. Those are your new role models, Mr. Bush. Let your minions try to spread the blame to the real patriots here, who have sought only to undo the horrors you have wrought since 2002. Let them try it, until the end of time. Though the words might be erased from a million books and a billion memories, though the world be covered knee-deep in your lies, the truth shall prevail. This, sir, is your war. Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq? Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush. Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations. Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

7 16 07

On Meet the Press this week, the Webb/Graham debate was indicative of the contentiousness of American politics on several planes. A question I entertain is, when did the Republicans become so unwise? Who do they think they are to represent Americans such as to perpetuate use of citizen-soldiers and American resources in a war zone for no apparent purpose beyond perhaps oil reserves (even the dumbest politician must by now know that Iraq doesn't WANT peace, nor do they want an end to the international attention being paid....rather they want war dollars to continue to pour in to their pockets directly from the American taxpayer, often to be used for the most disreputable purposes). Again, the overall disaster of Iraq lies at the foot of the very worst, most stubbornly unwise President in American history, G. W. Bush. However the Congress has to bear some responsibility if it wants to retain its third of the seperated powers within government (and there's doubt they might). The question remains: what on earth is wrong with Senator Lindsay Graham and his ilk who adhere to his line of thinking? And what's wrong with the voters of South Carolina to advance such a representative? Even more disturbing; has America lost her ability to take the high road of moderation and common sense? Do the sacrifices made by Americans mean anything to these so-called representatives? Do these representatives have any sense where "terrorism" is concerned? And finally, will we have any resources left to fight back after these people break the bank? Does the McCain go-broke campaign spell out the all-or-bust mentality of people who demand we pay a third of our income to them for these ridiculous results? A thanks to Mr. Webb for tweaking the wanker of the naked emporer...the crowd is screaming "naked", but the emporer is, so far, stone deaf. Or rock stupid. Or both.

7 13 07

I was thinking about a 1944 Oldsmobile....or a 1943 copper penny. Not very common. In fact, nearly impossible to find. You may realize that this was because the Defense Department needed the GM production line for tanks....and the copper for assembly of war time materials. The people did without new cars and spent a penny minted from steel. Victory gardens provided food for rural families. Scrap collections were a source of iron and rubber was rationed as was gas and oil. People blacked out their windows with black curtains and paint, and they served as air-raid wardens within their communities. The country was at war. REAL war. The country was commited. A REAL political leader placed the country on notice. And the times followed truly harsh economic (Hoover) times such that a job on an assembly line was a vast improvement over life in a soupline. All the economic pieces fit in terms of commitment, support, buy-in, ideal, unity. The enemy was a bad guy doing bad things to innocent people. And our collective effort to do war with the bad guy created jobs at home. The government borrowed heavily with few questions asked. There was literally no tomorrow. War bonds. Stamps. The draft. The works. Such commitment wins war. It was the last war America has been involved in that was a certain and clear victory. Sure....the cold war comes to mind. But a victory? And I'm afraid a strong case can be made that the Iraq war engaged by Bush 2 is the one started by the Kuwait conflict engaged by a wiser Bush the first. Today, whether resultant or not, we have religious extremists reportedly itching to kill us over their ideal. The question we have to ask ourselves is; to engage war are we willing to do without? To sacrifice? To commit? To kill without mercy? To volunteer? Do we have leadership honest enough to convince us that a heavy personal sacrifice is in our own best interest? So far, I think we suspect we know the answers to those unpleasant queries. And as an aside and while on the subject of unpleasantries, the Iraq war (as a subset of an undeclared "war on terror") has now cost America in today's dollars approximately one quarter what WWII cost. The price to you as a citizen, also your spouse, granny, and your children is approximately $1300 each. To me, a bargain if Osama Bin Laden bites the dust and the religious extremists/terrorists either get the message or are blasted to oblivion. http://costofwar.com/

7 8 07

Years ago, the seventies I think, there was a man in Florida who started a TTBO campaign. Sick of gas shortages, tax hikes, Viet Nam etc etc (sound somewhat familiar?) the Throw the Bums Out campaign gained traction...at least in terms of publicity and noise. Mail (the real kind where a guy puts paper into a box attached to your house) passed around and at the time of the big election, nothing happened. The bums stayed in. Voters went straight to the polls and voted for THEIR guy. They wanted the OTHER guy to throw THEIR bums out. The status of incumbent is thus valued by office holders to be worth a high percentage of the auto-vote. Easy. Go to the polls, find the (I), pull the lever, put on your "I voted" sticker and drive back to your life all civic-satisfied. I suspect this phenomenon is still very much in force. However, we have yet another chance (at least until the Supreme Court takes over the selection function entirely). I have heard proposed a new verb. To decumbent. That is, if you as a thinking voter decide that a change in American direction might be appropriate, you may go to the polls, find the (I) and avoid the names next to that (I) like bubonic plague. To decumbent means to remove those in federal office, state office, local office etc. and put in their place completely new people of diverse backgrounds in the hope that the chemical mix of this new group might actually think about issues from the point of the people of America who will be living and dying under their laws and dictates. No guarantees of course. But the issues of war, economy, retirement, inflation, foreign relations, medical issues, industry, research, defense, ecology, ethics, (the list is very long and important-sounding) has not been properly discussed by our INCUMBENT representatives, so why not give a shot to those hopefully less tainted folks who replace them. If you have another word for this, fine. The important thing is that we not get caught up in a campaign that loses sight of the point (whatever your particular "point" might be in political translation).

7:07am, 7 7 07

Given the unusual date I thought I might think through the next couple of election cycles. Two terms of Hillary Clinton, the wife of a President, following two terms of the son of a President, we have to assume the electorate can find from four hundred million possibilities only a slight few candidates from a very small subset of the population. So we can look for candidate Chelsea Clinton to perhaps run against candidate Laura Bush? Such is pretty much a given since the voters of America can't seem to find a way to remember anybody else's last name, at least without the aid of many highly patronizing, publicly funded multi-billion dollar commercials, long enough to cast a ballot such that the Supreme Court might not properly select a connected right wing Republican. So let's move on to the First Dog. Would it be a descendent of Checkers? Nixon's dog was a cute cocker spaniel and LBJ's animal's offspring can't hear very well from genetic damage resultant from Yuki being picked up by the ears by that (other) Texas moronic war mongering president-by-default of our near past. Not much of a chance for the first pet to be something less usual given we can't break from the mold of blathering, war making, tax dollar consuming, party baiting, empty promising inside the beltway types. So my guess is a short haired, brown, medium size dog that never bites the hand that feeds it. What do YOU think?

7 4 07

Today's word is "judgement". With the entire blogging world focusing on the Libby commutation, and with Bush-bashing risen to new levels of extreme, I thought I might avoid all the more obvious current "stupid politician" material and focus on judgement. Mr. Bush's judgement is a proven entity. He judged it reasonable to fire Defense Secretary Romney AFTER the midterm elections ended when it would do no good for his party at all. His judgement was to commute Libby's punishment before the end of his term, furthering himself into lameduck lake and just at a time Republicans are desperate for any cover at all from the exercize of really really really bad judgement. Mr. Bush judged it OK to wiretap his own people. His judgement okayed Abu Graib and the torture of combatants. Mr. Bush took our country to war, judging that we would buy his yellowcake argument, then WMD, then middle-eastern democratization, now in need of some surge time to fight it out amongst themselves, us in the middle. Judgement. So, after the Supreme Court elected this guy (remember 2000?), and after this guy returned their gesture and packed the Supreme Court to the right (the supes now moving against their own past "decisions"), and after the non-executive branch member Dick Cheney has holed up himself and his secret information in his non-executive executive office, Mr. Bush has judged that Putin will settle for a lobster dinner in place of an emplacement of anti missle missles in eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the Republicans can scarcely believe his immigration judgements even as they legislatively encourage him, even as they quietly support him right in the middle of their own flailing nomination debates (goodbye Mr. McCain...so nice to know ye). With 3500 dead American soldiers, thousands of dead Iraqis, tens of thousands of wounded and maimed Americans, Mr. Bush presses on, judging that American onshore defenses cannot be penetrated even though a huge percentage of the military is otherwise engaged, policing a thousand year-old religious-based civil war. My judgement on this is that the American voter has been a little short on ....uh....judgement.

7 1 07

A note to you suicide bombers: I just heard from Allah, fellas. On a lark I faced Mecca and Allah tapped me lightly on the shoulder. He told me PERSONALLY that since there's been such a spate of martyr applications lately, the inventory of virgins is getting a bit sparse there in the great beyond. He told me that there are some emergency virgins expected soon, however most of these are those with a slight little mustache, a bit heavy-ish, and all with that one dark hairy eyebrow and big facial pores. Also this crop is a bit heavy on skin blemishes. Allah seemed slightly embarrassed by this. You know the type...virgin by nature and not by choice. Anyway, instead of twenty seven virgins as promised earlier, a system of rationing will have to be in place until an alternate source of virgins can be found. Allah sends his greetings and is sorry for this turn of events. He wishes you peace and serenity in your non-infidel virtues within your ancient religious values, and wishes you death to America (not a realistic goal, but with spoiled Americans like Paris Hilton and George Bush on the loose, Allah certainly understands the sentiment). Just as a post script, I think Allah was hoping you guys might back off just a bit and rethink your general thrust on things. But that's just me.

6 26 07

The headlines: Senator Lugar Breaks With Bush on Iraq. Better late than never. But this well regarded Indiana Senator has finally seen what many have for tortured years recognized....Mr. Bush has led our nation down a path that ends in a sheer drop to national decline. A war against Iraq, conducted by a nonsense soul such as G. W. Bush during a time when a growing army of militant Islamics are declaring defiantly their intent to kill Americans, has bled us of our capability to DEFEND (remember that word in American history?) ourselves. We well up with pride recalling the Minutemen, the "shot heard round the world", Washington crossing the Delaware. But now, when it counts, we have leadership like Bush and a Vice President who actually thinks himself the dictator of North America. But today... finally...FINALLY...Mr. Lugar has no choice but to recognize our peril and declare it such that his influence may give cover to the cowards in the Senate less willing to stand on their own two right-wing feet. We have no choice but to come to terms with our realities in economics, energy, defense and the national dialogue if we want to continue the American experiment. We are going to have to think a bit less conventionally to recover. Bless you Senator. We know it took courage. We only hope you're not too late. Lead on, sir.

6 25 07

Let's look at the Bush American Bill of Rights scorecard, shall we?:

Freedom of speech: Yes....unless you say something offensive. Like Bong Hits for Jesus. Then no. (Supreme Court, six to three)

Freedom of religion: Yes....unless you choose the wrong one....or none at all. Then you may get a good talking to by the heavenly chosen ones.

Freedom of assembly: Yes....there's a designated assembly area for you, away from the President. Quietly. By yourselves. Without being noticed please.

Right to bear arms: Yes....so far.....if you have paid for a license and aren't proven insane or criminal. But not in all states and cities. As soon as the database is fixed.

Freedom of the press: Yes....as long as you divulge your sources, otherwise JAIL with no hearing. Caution, especially if you're the Leaker in Chief. National "Secrets"?....Jail. Unless VP.

6 21 07

Let us ponder this moment the importance of science within the framework of American politics. Without science, how might the atomic bomb been developed, or by whom? What might have become of Jonas Salk? How might we have rejected Pasteur, DeCartes, Einstein, Darwin, Newton? Yet....we elect a President who vetoes stem cell research. TWICE. Three Republican presidential candidates thrust their hands in the air when asked if they do not believe in evolution. One gets the impression that either these guys never had a basic course in science, or they are playing a game of politics so thick that they must pander to the very lowest of the intellectual base from which they feel the masses might contribute adequate votes to elect them. Or maybe these simpletons think it's OK to impose on the rest of us a morality of a blinkered and narrow-mindedness known to so many more thoughtful people as ridiculously out of touch with current knowledge. After all, it's not exactly a sign of intellect to run for office these days. A candidate has at this point to ask himself if there are any odds in taking on a hell of a war mess, a hell of an economic mess, a hell of a domestic mess, a hell of a foreign affairs mess, a hell of a social justice mess etc etc just to have the front seat on a taxpayer funded airplane. If a person has the basics of a science education, this same person likely has the sense to know that such a task is going to sacrifice the self in every possible regard. Most folks of any sense who would pass research funds within the health sciences might think it personally unrewarding to occupy such an office. Thus....the highest executive offices are likely to be occupied by the least aware (or greatest egos) among us, creating a greater mess of things when exercising increasingly bad judgement, thus fostering an ever dumbing down of the crop of office seekers. Something not quite right about that, wouldn't you agree?

6 14 07

Tell the truth...at least to yourself (noting the name of this blog).....do you get the impression that America teeters on chaos lately? Does every issue we face take on the complexity and disarray of something being (mis)managed by the most foolish of handlers? Is immigration a gray area for you? The war in Iraq? Energy? Economy? Defense posture? Social justice? Justice in general? Is the ill feeling left us by Nixon starting to feel like just a slight fever compared to the blitz of pneumonia we seem lately to face? Wondering why? Why can't we face certain truths? Why can't we find a direction? Why can't we face ourselves as a democracy? Do you notice the other parts of the world that count on others to survive are killing and looting itself only to construct a far diminished and dangerous system of life each time it does so? Do you ever wonder why they don't learn from their mistakes? Do you wonder why we don't learn from our own? Would you sell out the entire world for a lifetime of ease for yourself? Do you vote for men who sell out the country to enrich themselves? Isn't that the real question here? We have a second term President who has no direction, no wisdom, no feeling for leadership, and as poorly as this man has done he still has a quarter of our population following him as if nothing is amiss? Do you wonder about that? Right wing extremism, whether mildly dogmatic or death-to-infidel, is ruining entire populations, injecting war as an arm of its ruinous doctrine to impose itself on millions of people who are in such disarray they cannot organize long enough to defend themselves. Do you wonder where all this disarray will lead? Can you face a harsh truth? Are you aware that, as a single voice within a democracy, you can help to fix this if you involve yourself into a process so desperately in need of leadership and direction? Whatever decisions we make at this point, there has to be leadership, reasons for taking certain roads, and above all, a mindfulness of long term best interest and the greater good. Do you think that's possible at this point?

6 11 07

It sounds a little like the Jerry Falwell method of human relations; "do what we say or we attack". So right-wing with such a predictable outcome. These rightist types preach 'thou shalt not kill', 'eye for an eye' blather blather, and now, "thou shalt preemptively strike" is the current moral high ground for the world's fastest declining "super power", at least if Joe Lieberman gets his way. Why? Because Joe is rightwing blind. Connecticut attempted to get away from this myopia, but it failed, and now the rest of us have a death advocate in the Senate. Is it because Joe's real sentiments are Jewish? Is America an arrow in his Jewish quiver? Will the rest of America stay quiet about such an attitude as to turn our now worn, torn, used, thinned, tired defense into offensive hitmen for the right-wing Bushlike shortsighted among us? Are we now supposed to listen to these mouthpieces yelp the tired and tiring schoolyard insults against "intellectuals"? "Liberals"? Peaceniks? Is peace actually a bad thing in the mind of the myopic? Is being a peace loving, diplomacy minded, middle-roader going to come into the sites of these self-blinding rightists? Seems their main agenda is to control others such as to minimize the pleasures of life and maximize dogma as they may define. The rest of us may vote for one of them if we know what's good for us. Jerry Falwell must be so very proud.....except that now the worms feed on his eyes....as they will us all.

6 8 07

There's an email going around suggesting consumers boycott Citgo products due to the fact that Venezuela's Chavez is the beneficiary of this company.

Well...this is a nice try....but too little too late. Americans have shown that they will buy gas no matter its source or price and burn it away for the most frivolous of reasons. Further, Americans will vote fools into office, the current one no exception, because most vote based on emotion, marketing, gamesmanship etc, not intellect and thoughtfulness. Americans are once again proving, by virtue of a disconnect with their own reality as a nation, that it really doesn't matter who dies for their country or why....as long as it's not us and Wal-Mart is open with cheap Chinese goods.   Yeah...I know. We all internalize. We say, "yeah, but at least *I* (use good light bulbs, drive a hybrid, don't buy Chavez gas, justification justification, etc etc). Too late. The next election is probably not even relevant in the wider scheme of things. Bernanke has less effect on theUS economy than the Saudis have any day of the year. Just a matter of facing it at this point.  Not to say we shouldn't be aware...it's just that we have a history now of letting others die for our country while we fiddle away resources and justify our personal political wishes. Unless we can regain strength, innovation, leadership, energy, economy, discipline, social sanity, etc (c'mon, you know what's wrong) America is in for a significant metamorphosis. For now, the Paris Hiltons are the only show in town.

6 4 07

Perhaps it's time for regular people to accept the obvious: the field of people who have an actual chance of being their national leaderhip in a system of "free enterprise" etc. is going to be filthy rich, highly connected, and probably second or third generation highly-privileged. Politics, sometimes described as show business for ugly people, has turned decidedly predictable. The Democrats for all their well intentioned rhetoric, are telling us for example how we will have universal health insurance, complete with higher quality care and affordability. Do we actually think this possible? Do we think we can increase quality of health care while keeping taxes down, lowering prices of health premiums while keeping the process of creating physicians in the hands of the AMA? All while keeping pharacuetical research and production in the hands of private companies already benefitting from perhaps billions of research and tax credits? Can more people from an expanding population with more exotic ills be packed into waiting rooms with real expectations that each will receive the same attention as, say, Chelsea Clinton? Do we perceive, come to think of it, that we can do much of anything in terms of social justice while the treasury is buried deep in war-debt and wild spending now to the tune about nine trillion dollars? Why not just promise cheap gasoline for everyone while we're at it? What the hell's the difference between distributing one commodity we don't have and another? Do we now find it useful to make fun of the outliers of political discourse, for example...the utterances of a Gravel or a Kucinich... or even a Joe Biden....because they might dare tell us a real truth that we just don't want to hear?

The answer is: we'll buy the same old pig in the same old poke from the same old well-connected pols sending the same old people to the same old federal offices while clinging to the same old expectations and complaining about the same old things yielding the same old results for the same old beneficiaries. Wanna bet? See you in November 08.

5 25 07

The party line on inflation seems to be intentionally mushy. With food and fuel both rising to historic levels, neither are computed within the formula to determine American inflation. Medical up. Insurance up. Postage up. Though housing falls because demand does not absorb supply of new inventory....speculator purchases of real estate got out of hand and supply outstretched consumption. Meanwhile, we have the capacity to refine 17 million barrels of gasoline daily while we burn up 22 million a day, thus requiring us to buy from refiners abroad, mostly from those who do not like Americans and their high spending ways. You want more money. I want more money. He wants more money. They want more money. And within the areas most widely required for continuation of life (or lifestyle) (food, clothing, fuel, and normally shelter) more money is on the table for extraction by suppliers/vendors. We cannot do without certain elements of life....and at the speed we've chosen to live we demand more per user per annum. Huge homes, SUV's, extravagant meals, unnecessary trips in the family car several times daily. In the meantime, we seem to still politely congratulate ourselves for producing more children. Just what we need.....more members of the species which is stripping the elements of earth that allowed the species to develop in the first place. More people, more demand, less available. Shall we guess how factors such as price and inflation will play regarding diminishing resources? Shall we continue to live under the illusion that congress can pass laws to control prices while enhancing supply levels of resources we don't have? Do we think China, and other competing nations, is not paying attention?

5 21 07

"Increasingly irrelevent". That is what the Bush administration called former President Jimmy Carter when Carter voiced what the majority of Americans have been screaming about current Bush foreign policy. The last election wasn't enough to pry the grip of contentiousness from this group of schoolyard bullies. America has been for six years now in a PeeWee Hermanesque "I know you are but what am I" political mode at the expense of treasure, blood, reputation. Our national strength has been sapped by one political atrocity after another all intentionally inspired by the most unwise administration of all time. Never has America been so fractured, so angry, and so ill served. Bush has moved from unrespectable to disdainful. Jimmy Carter, in any one day of his life, projects more humanity than PeeWee Bush will entertain in total. How we may have "elected" an inarticulate, bullying, contentious mob of dirilects is beyond me, but once again, hand on heart, here's hoping we can survive the fools of the P.W. Herman administration. I suspect that, like me, Republicans will never again enjoy the vote of quite a number of thoughtful and disheartened Americans.

4 30 07

Returning to an old theme, only because it's becoming vogue now that so many people are finally catching on (recall Viet Nam if you can) to the Bush imcompetency.... what would America do if, God forbid, a crazy man became Commander in Chief of the armed forces and began giving orders to otherwise-sane Generals to violently apply his crazed designs using the might of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex? What is the so-called check/balance to this eventuality? We who have have but one vote each, and that vote only to choose a representative who eventually has one actual vote on matters of importance, MUST count on Congress. And this is exactly the condition that Pelosi and Ried are applying themselves toward where Iraq is concerned. Bush had and has notions that have proved completely misguided, over and over. The VP is obstinate and unchanging, the President is arrogant and wrong headed, the people in the administrative inner-circle are total YESMEN, and after five years, a trillion dollars, and many thousands of lives lost it's far past time that checks and balances be applied. Not to say America is not in conflict with terrorism and religious fanatisism, but so is the world, and America must join the world in a symbiotic way to defeat this threat to civilization. But to destroy one mostly uninvolved backwards country, in the process turning it into a religious fanatisism training camp, and demonstrate every weakness the west can deploy, this president has done irreperable harm to American interests internationally and domestically. We have high hope that the Dems will continue to apply their constitutional duty to restrain the Bush non-think and redeploy those resources we have left toward the actual DEFENSE of America and stop the hemorrhage of defense assets for the arrogant and egotistical offensive vindication of one failed and highly unwise President.

4 26 07

With apology to James Carville, the single line driving a presidential choice this cycle should probably be "IT'S OUR INTERNATIONAL CREDIBILITY, STUPID!"

But then, that kind of soundbite simplicity shortchanges problems almost as big...such as a nine trillion dollar deficit from which we have NO chance to "grow". And the fact that we have burned away our energy and still have friviolous notions such that we're a nation of self-interested SUV and HUMMER leisure drivers.... while at war to keep the oil lines full. Not to mention population, both natural and immigrant, burgeoning beyond manageability. Then of course, there's the spiraling cost of medical care for those of us already here. Ah well....at least we have a right-wing, Bush-packed Supreme Court ready to take us back to the fourteenth century. And we can always count on the fractured Congress to wisely debate...... their own interests.

Every vote is going to count in this one.....we hope.

4 6 07

It seems, regardless of how the British captives may have behaved and whether it was the right or wrong way to go about military strategy whilst captives of crazed followers of Allah, that things turned out OK for them. The good news is that even the recalcitrant corners of the earth must agree that a nuclear device in the hands of small minded nations who think they make rational points by being hyper-territorial is just not a very good idea. If these pointy-heads can't control themselves in the simplest of times with the most conventional of arms, what can we expect if they have the capacity (or will) to destroy their own hemisphere? It follows that a collective must be reasonably adult when comporting itself on the world stage. Besides a little oil, what have the Muslims (et al) shown the world besides a proclivity to kill themselves for selfish reasons (the 21 virgins thing) taking several who don't want to go with them? Just how self-serving must they prove themselves, and how many times must they prove it, before the rest of the world closes in with the force of the saner argument that suggests civilization will not tolerate this ignorant and threatening behavior any longer? Once this is apparent, the next question is: how do we make the point in the most efficient way? It seems, after all, that some of the wild-eyed cretans we try to reason with have no ability to reason. Does this leave us with yet another situation where a Bush or a Cheney might declare themselves the Great Decider and decide for another pre-emptive strike, again risking the lives of militia-folk comprised of everyone except the Great Deciders' friends and relatives?

Life is complex lately.

4 4 07

One has to wonder just how DUMB the Bush administration can further prove itself. Have they never heard the term "sharp as an Arab Trader"? When gunpowder was incorporated into the battle, spears became useless in conflict. Armed warships trumped coastal groundtroops. Iron ships trumped wooden ones. Airplanes trumped steel vessels. Nuclear bombs trumped a war machine. And now ECONOMICS is the new weapon, trumping all others. Economics. Iran can thumb its arrogant nose in the face of the arrogant American President because it sits atop a puddle of energy. Anything that impacts middle east fuel prices reverberates negatively throughout the U.S. and the world. So what does our BRILLIANT leadership do? It picks a fight with its own Congress demanding billions to piss away on a meaningless conflict while frittering away the remains of American know how and resources along with the elements that compell creative people an opportunity to replace fossil fuels large scale. It can only be our prayer that the Bush administration will inflict only minimum damage to our country during the remainder of its term, and that new leadership, once mercifully in place, will be wiser in the way it conducts American direction.

The Bush line of dipomacy consistently has been to decry anyone who is in disagreement with Bushthink. Conversely, anyone who consistently agrees with Bushthink becomes a "Bushie" and perhaps is rewarded with a federal job for which he or she is not qualified. We go to war without diplomatic discussion. We ruin lives in our country and out. We waste our resources on activities begun on lies such as WMD, African yellowcake, and brash talk from the incompetent. GW Bush has been a disaster in terms of American credibility, American resources and America's future. The only surprise left is that any percentage of the population still manages to justify support of the Bush misadventure.

3 21 07

The reason a Bush offer for staffers to converse 'off the record' falls short is because this administration has been so unforthcoming over its tenure. It has wire-tapped its own people, lied to us about WMD and other important issues, taken us to unnecessary war, killed thousands, wounded hundreds of thousands, destroyed American credibility, tortured human beings and overseen the most corrupt administration in memory. One must hope that such an administration does not cross a delicate line whereby mobs of people will be forced to show first hand why the founders of this great country thought it important to allow free citizens the right to bear arms.

3 19 07

Moving away from G. Bush now, given that voters seem to have lately caught on to his foolishness (a few years and one near-dead super power too late), the next looming disaster is a matter of economy. For years we have been warning ourselves, and for years we've taped a thin bandage over this fiscal gushing wound and declare first-aid accomplished, however the United States Comptroller confirms that we are now approaching economic "doomsday" (his word, not mine). We are coming quickly to a point, exaserbated by five years of throwing good money after bad in our war-making, whereby a confluence of our debt and entitlement promises cannot be paid. The U.S. Comptroller says the obvious...that the only solution comes from cutting back entitlement and/or exacting a higher tax to pay it. With the U.S. at seven trillion to the negative, and with an army of about fifty million people crossing the retirement line starting NOW and soon to expect both payment and medical attention, the United States will not be able to pay somewhere around 2011. I have always rather cynically suggested that we would be exactly in this spot, and always suggested that the cowards we elect to national office will inflate to pay off the retiring hordes. After all, inflation is a tax whereby money is printed, giving diminished relative value to the money already circulating, thus offering the difference as "federal funds" to satisfy a federal obligation. A tax by any other name. I recall having written Jimmy Carter in the seventies offering to forego any Social Security payments if the gov would just stop taxing my income for Social Security. He didn't write back. So now, I better be paid. I demand it. No negotiating. A diminished amount is not acceptible. A ponze scheme by any other name. And the fifty bucks a month I paid for somebody else's medical care all these years? ....that's right! I have high expectations of a personal return. Want to argue the point? Want to make a deal? Go ahead. Write the government and see where it gets you. I accept cash only.

3 10 07

My silence of late is born of wild disappointment and frustration over the willingness of our highly paid government representatives to do their jobs. They are supposed to be overseeing all the processes they themselves emplace such that individual citizens, or localized governments, don't have to deal with nationally important issues on their own. Identity theft, illegal immigration, healthcare, war, foreign policy, economy, fuel, national resources, military affairs. The list seems endless. Still there seems no shortage of people who want to run for offices ostensibly to manage and oversee national issues at a central and representative level. Instead we have a time within the American experiment where an inept Chief Exective has been-rubber stamped by a blind (or stupid) Congress, itself emplaced by an unwise judiciary, and the result is an America diminished now to an unrecognizable second-rate entity. Wildly disappointing. The only ray of hope I have with my one vote, which invariably runs counter to the myopia of local election results, is that perhaps we might accidently vote some quality back into the system at some point. It's a very thin and dim ray of hope, given Hillary Clinton is running along with Giulliani and others all concluding themselves capable of making the tough decisions, even though most are already in positions of decision-making yet currently seem incapable of making a difference, often suggesting they are powerless to affect the very changes they may seem to advocate. It all makes so little sense at a moral level, and makes so much sense at a greed/privileged level. It makes sense to conduct a war that profits the pals of the VP. It makes sense to prolong a war that kills nobody in the families of the Ivy League crowd. It makes sense to spend America into heavy deficit as long as the tax code favors the very very wealthy. Why not let the little guy pay, die for his country, suffer the indignity of having no representation whatsoever, even during vital elections. It's not a stretch to make the case that we have become the very thing we hate the most....and for the same reasons.

1 31 07

We seem to be fully divided now by President Uniter. He spent his political capital, brought it on, decided he was the sole decider for the rest of us, and now we're dug into a fiscal black hole of a civil war in a part of the world so bizarre that death is good, money is oil, power is religion and locals shoot an AK47 into the air on any and every happy occasion. President decider decided to send more troops, spend more money, not listen to anyone in the doing, and initiates his decisions before any discussion can take place. And now there is the potential for a wife of a President to take the office from the son of a President, perhaps to co-serve with a Senate full of sons of Senators. We live in the bizarrest of times.

I sure wish he would learn to pronounce the word "nuclear". Don't you?

1 26 07

One has to wonder about the Republicans. One has to ask oneself if another Nixon-esque episode is really necessary to get through to these guys. Do we need another Kent State? They didn't seem to listen to the election results. They don't listen to military leadership. They don't listen to Congress. They've fired anyone with an argument. And now the people, reminiscent of Nixon days, the very ones who are supposed to be represented, are gathering by the thousands with protest signs on the National Mall. AGAIN. The dialogue is getting ugly, and these Republicans just dig in, ever stubborn. Stunning to imagine after all we've spent on facilities to educate. After all the pain of Watergate. After all the embarrassment, these guys are just doing it again in the name of selling their particular position that is, in their minds, always and immutably correct. Stunning. Even harder to bear is the pain of the mothers, families, children of the servicemen who are about to die carrying out these half-baked notions who actually voted for Bush. In effect, voting for their own deaths and the lifelong anguish of those they will leave behind. How many this time. Two hundred? Five hundred? And....how many NEXT time?

1 15 07

Let us suppose as a mental exercise that the President of Azurbyakistan, a man who wears his religion on his sleeve, attacks a country he thought antagonizing his own, and things began to go badly. To fix things, and to bring the enemy around to his way of thinking, he sends young troops into enemy territory and loses thousands of them. His war stretches on into years. He stretches his defense mechanism to the point where there's doubt that it can defend his home country in an emergency. He spends a huge percentage of his country's wealth in waging his war. The people of his country tire of his failures and his nonsensical war posture and begin to oppose his war making. His Parliament oppose him and is divided to the point of dysfunction. His military generals advise against further war making, telling him the conflict solution lies in political compromise and not by brute military force. He fires those generals for their failures. Everything about this conflict of his own making warns him loudly of his own malfeasance and miscalculation. He has no plan as to what constitutes winning his war, nor does he have a plan to get out, yet through stubborn and foolish ego, and a self conviction that he and only he can be correct on such matters, he proceeds on his own self-asserted authority. Sound familiar? Does the guy sound like a nut? A dictator? Does the fact that he is President of Azurbyakistan make it easier to roll your eyes in understandable disgust as just another leader of an ignorant and backwards third-world people lacking the wisdom to see their place in the world?

1 12 07

Woweee....

Super Power? Indeed? Really? A Venezuelan Socialist gives a UN speech and sticks his finger in our eye. Nothing. No response. Iran sticks its finger in our eye. Anything yet? Nope. A bunch of Islamic thugs knock over two commercial buildings in New York and the main thug is still making videos, sticking his finger in the American eye. Response? Take on Iraq....and LOSE the conflict to third world combatants whose main ambition is to DIE? over FOUR YEARS? costing billions? And what are all these atomic subs for? What are all these batteries of expensive nuclear weaponry about? Is all that just for show? Are we saying, "We double-dog dare you to knock down our buildings and kill our people otherwise our military will give you a severe glaring at? Can we assume our military does not have the hutspah, the gender, the kahonas, the testes, the manhood, the girth, to chunk a nuclear device into Tehran? Is the "all volunteer army" being led by overpaid, star decorated puppets of indecisive paperhangers whose job it is to blow a whistle and direct traffic on the corner of Sunni Street and Shiite Boulevard? The truth is, even the biggest ship has to have somebody at the helm to steer off the rocks. The American voter has twice now elected a helmsman who steers our ship of state directly INTO the rocks whilst muttering "bring it on" and "nu-cue-lar, nu-cue-lar, nu-cue-lar," then he backs up and full speed ahead....hits them again. Then AGAIN!! He is as I see it totally out of control. So the problem is at the VOTER level. And if that's the case, how on earth does the term "Super Power" apply? And NOW, what with someone in opposition actually questioning the results of a series of unwise decisions, the war mongers are turning into fear mongers. They tell us how bad it will be if we lose. (IF?) And why not? After all, it seems to have worked in the elections. So let's SPEND it UP...you know.... while we still have a negative trillion dollars to piss away before we have no credit left at all.

1 10 07

Stunning. STUNNING. The generals advised against his plan. Fired. Congress advises against his plan. Snubbed. The American People by a huge majority are against his plan. Tough. At some point, after noting that mostly the people who are PAID to agree out loud with President W. Nucular (Snow, Barkley, others), while moderates their keep heads down offering to listen to a speech with open mind....already 90 percent leaked and which outlines a "plan" that does not even define what it means to qualify as "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED". At some point, and this is disturbing that such a thought might even come to mind, one might have to entertain the notion that Bush is not altogether sane. He may not understand the basic tenets of his office. He certainly doesn't understand what the majority of the people, the military, the Congress, perhaps the world have been telling him they want of this bad situation OF HIS OWN MAKING as it now stands. Yet, and listen carefully when he speaks, he uses the word "understand" when casting his will against how we who must suffer the consequences of that will. Somewhat crazy, and certainly disturbing after the fourth iteration or so. We just don't "understand" that we must pay so much more in treasure. We just don't "understand" that families must suffer the loss of daddy, of husband, of son, of friend. We just don't "understand" that we have to "take the war to the enemy" for purposes of WMD, of democracy, of peace, of "staying the course"??. War on terror? We just don't "understand". Obviously we don't. If a guy is nuts, not sane, crazy, off center.....if a guy babbles on in terms not cogent, not well thought, not well planned, not congruent to a consistency of logic, then of course we don't "understand".

Understand?

1 9 07

So...here we go. Chips are down. Prezidunt Nu-cu-ler, having promised a heightened degree of bipartisanship is going to "speak" to the nation. The rumors are: more of the same. The Dems are aligning with the safety of the troops and little else. Moderates are saying we've been down this path before. (We have. Twice.) The Prez also wants another hundred billion dollars to keep up the efforts of stitching together a backwards civilization that can only be held together by fear and intimidation....a function a dictatorial sadist like Saddam Hussein nicely served until he decided it would work on Kuwait, too. Iraq will never be democratized...and perhaps not even civilized. The factions are based on religion and tribal culture, and the likelihood of sane compromise is as likely as Pat Robertson converting to Hinduism. So the argument the Prez will make will have little sense at its base (why should he start now?), and will cost us huge in dollars and maybe (probably) also in dead bodies and ruined families. The Congress will remain fractured, voting FOR something they as a new but slim majority are AGAINST which will be indicative of NO BACKBONE to hold to the party principle. Meanwhile, the economy seems to somehow chug along, the debt continues to rise beyond the stratosphere, the rich continue to have tax relief, and the unemployment numbers, while currently at reasonable levels are portended by conventional economic wisdom to be headed to the mid sixes to early sevens. This while a few million baby boomers cross the 62 mark and begin collecting that which they have been paying all their lives, which mostly lies in the form of unfunded federal IOU's.

And GM seems to be getting it. A stylish 120 volt plug-in car? What was their first clue?

Life is interesting.

12 23 06

It often occurs to me that genius occupies America. The American mental audicity is, or can be, stunning. We take for granted the things that enrich our lives, the miracles of our curiosities, the outcomes of our efforts. We can view our weather from space, traverse huge distances in hours, view the world in crisp images without leaving our homes. The drivers of these outcomes are diverse....intellectual curiosity, inventive nature, greed. But overall the environment has to be set such that these miracles can occur and within that environment we count mostly on wisdom and leadership. We have suffered a terrible dearth of leadership, particularly in the last six years. If lucky, we may have opportunity to correct this. However the voter must be wise and the patrons of leadership, those in position to align and groom wisdom for leadership purposes, must itself be inventive. If the Democrats nominate Hillary, chances are very high that the Republicans will win the Executive Branch once again. The Republican President of the last six years has been dismally deficit in his ability to understand his own position in the scheme of American things. And the Republican party has seemed less than wise in its understanding of the American experiment. The Republican has chosen war and deceipt over wisdom and leadership. Even today he clings to the notion that history will upright his personal image. If anything, it will judge him even more harshly than the current polls indicate citizens are judging him now. Thus our hope for getting government ballast shifted in a positive way may be in the hands of the Democrats' willingness to move away from a "long live the king" style of nomination process. Children of presidents, spouses of presidents, friends of presidents, the inheritors of power etc. may be the very worst way to attempt to groom future leadership. Better we listen carefully and choose wisely from within all in contention. Hopefully we can serve ourselves, the world and those who feel compelled to destroy themselves in their foolish efforts to destroy others. Time is critical, and anyone who thinks matters can't be much worse may need to look more carefully at the lessons of our own history. Time to unleash once again the genius of ourselves. Time to find leadership that understands the need.

11 7 06

Wow. I rub my eyes in disbelief. Dubya held a conference with Tony Blair as his wing-man where he said he will accept some recommendations of the Baker Hamilton report by continuing course, implying more of the same. So....more lives, more money, more destruction, more awfulness. America hit the Republicans hard in the mid-term election in hopes the Republicans might communicate to their president the will of the majority within the voting electorate. And we are at "more of the same" as communicated in awkward and waffling terms by two heads of western state. This leaves one of two realities for those of us in cozy chairs at home to choose between; Bush is absolutely right but is unable or unwilling to communicate to us WHY he is right. Or....Bush is a stubborn, dictatorial, unmoving madman with no feelings for the suffering he causes as he implements his half-baked international ambitions of which the most notable of contemporary American statesman suggest, formally and unanimously, has failed. I suppose there are other less subtle possibilities, but it's too much for this observer to be able to embrace as reality.  

So...a phrase from the fifties might be in order.....duck and cover.

11 6 07

Finally. FINALLY. The Baker Commission says; Washington should launch a diplomatic and political push to halt a "grave and deteriorating" crisis. This is very polite code from guys with gravitas which says, "Hey, President BUSH, you're killing our troops needlessly. There is nothing to be gained by your HUGELY POOR decisions. You have cost us international stature. You have cost us SIX HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. The REAL terrorists not only are at large, but their numbers have increased in multiples...sometimes by whole NATIONS. Heads of state are calling you the DEVIL. Not only can you not win, you must now try to extricate America so that western interests are not entirely LOST forever, you insensitive, unthinking, stubborn, ridiculous fool".

Of course, the Baker Commission is far more polite. But at last we can MAYBE get some sense through to those who have taken it on themselves to pose a "Bring It On" posture. Recalling that Bush gave Saddam 24 hours to get out of town (remember?), then before that time was up he lobbed American missiles at targets which proved of faulty intel. Recall that? Remember Dead Or Alive? Bring it ON? Remember WMD? That was six HUNDRED billion dollars and 2900 American lives ago. We have been in this longer than WWII. And we are nowhere close to solving the so-called terrorist problem. What a bloody mess. And irony of ironies, the same guy who argued this boy's 2000 presidential win to the Supreme Court is now trying to talk the boy down from destroying us entirely. FINALLY. I'm trying to be a little more hopeful, although this president's stubborn streak is wide and deep. We may have to hit him over the head with the election stick again. We'll see.

11 21 07

I just heard the counter argument to Charlie Rangel's draft proposal. (Watch out, Charlie...those are Swift Boats I hear). The argument comes from those TV Colonels, this one name Jack-something, who says loudly that Charlie doesn't know what he's talking about...... that the military doesn't NEED draftees. But Charlie is making a bigger point....a socio-economic point. This isn't about what the military needs. This is about sharing civic responsibility. Of course, for the moment none of the so-called political leaders are going to support a draft. Charlie knows this better than anyone. For now, there is no war. War is where you bomb the hell out of the enemy until he capitulates or lays completely dead. You send him, his dog, his kid, his goat to kingdom-come without mercy until you get your way. The news footage of the Iraq thing shows the same three marines night after night popping off a few small arms rounds from behind a block wall. Same footage...over and over. No big blasts, no wholesale death. No war. I don't even get the impression that we consider Iraq an enemy. We'll see that one guy Hussien gets hanged (his sons already shot dead) and try to figure out what to do next while spending a billion a week farting around with who decides which of the three options, none of which are acceptible, amidst the rantings of a people engaged in religious internal conflict now about two thousand years long. Charlie's point is this: as long as you're killing military types, be sure it's not just the guys you can buy for a little spot of ribbon on the chest.....let the Senator's son and President's daughter in on this death thing. That way at least when we DO engage war, we can hope it was actually as a last resort. The way it is, everyone in Washington is enjoying cocktails in safety and nobody they know is getting hurt while they fart around deciding mostly nothing. Charlie Rangel and I have about the same amount of military experience....and we know the two cardinal rules of military life. 1. Rank has its privilege. 2. Shit rolls downhill. And Charlie's voice is the one fair minded voice in that sludge up in Washington mindful mostly of its own re-election. And if you think the draft has to do with "military need", you need to learn to mispronounce the word "nuclear" until daddy"s friends make you president.

11 20 07

You just have to love Charlie Rangel. He understands. It won't be popular, but he's exactly right. He suggests that in January the first thing he'll do is propose legislation to reinstate the draft. It's beside the point that the military may function more efficiently with volunteers. The politics of Mr. Rangel's notion is that the high and mighty will be less likely to enter into the war option (politics by harsher means) if THEIR kids, or their constituent's kids might actually be harmed or killed over a half baked notion of forcing compliance from another nation into what might be a less than well thought-out agenda. It's been obvious to those of us who get shoved to the front of that particular line over the eons that the George Bush's of this world get to enjoy the good china in the dining room while those of us less well-born get K-rations in the rain. Of course, being of that era, I recall even in the days of the previous draft that, like V.P. Cheney reportedly enjoyed during the Viet Nam conflict, there were certain loop-holes for the well-connected that delayed or eliminated the commitment for offspring of friends of the powerful to participate in the harshness of the war event. This time, having moved painfully through political strains of demands for equality, the ladies will have to be drafted as well. And this time, the behind-the-lines clerical, shore and office jobs that serve as rotational combat relief cannot be reserved for these "equal" draftees who will presumably be conscripted in the name of that same demanded equality. (Or does equality only mean equal reward, but not equal sharing of responsibility?) Going to be some interesting days ahead.

Charlie Rangel....you are loved.

11 7 06

The morning after. Election results coming in, it reminds us of the beauty of the American process. Hitler was a historical and frightful leader in that there was no balance against his individual and twisted political rantings. The Nazi party did that ridiculous high five and responded blindly to his direction, right to its own end. So goes usually the uncontrolled will of one person in authority leading others. Our election process allows a defanging of what seems an inevitable process of one man deciding his self-perceived potency trumps the will of those who cannot seem to get through to him/her any other way. Such is the case now. The next two years should bring us back to a political boil with the usual rancor. We can perhaps leave the path that has yielded extreme direction such as war, silly economics, partisan policies and biased social unfairnesses. Sure....foolish things will always happen, but perhaps with checks back in place, not at the same frequency and at the same noise level as we have seen in the first six years of what will surely be seen by historians as a very foolish presidency. Whether deemed "failed" or not, we can rest a bit that those who represent us will begin to discuss some process by which we can extricate ourselves from involvements in foreign worlds which all too obviously do not want our involvement. We can perhaps find our way back to some path to fiscal responsibility. We can perhaps get back to domestic issues such as energy, immigration, medical and science advancement, and defensive (not offensive) preparation. The people may have found their wisdom collectively once again after several election cycles. My personal spirit is heightened on this very hopeful morning after.

11 2 07

Poor John....poor poor Swift Boat guy. Everybody beats up on the weird kid. Especially the bullies. And how opportune it is to detract from little things like....oh....war and death, loss of treasury, inflation and energy, national debt, deficit spending, WMD, Osama no found-ya, a loss of authority by virtue of the electorate finally coming to its senses and threatening to rebalance the Washington power base. "Let's beat up the wierd kid", the bully is heard to yell. Never mind the wierd kid can nicely articulate the NOOCULER word. Never mind that the wierd kid had a point, even though it was not his intended point (anyone who thinks the Army is populated by the offspring of the privileged is smoking something illegal). Never mind that the wierd kid was delivering a heartfelt message that needs heard....that if we don't watch ourselves, we will be in the same quagmire as these other religious-based, right-wing, war-involved zealots who mostly beat up (and kill) those who dare show a differing perspective in religion and politics. To hell with the constitution. Yes.....let's make the weird kid apologize for daring to make that stumbling gaff. After all, we have an election to win. Bush should climb right back on that tax fueled 747 instead of dealing with his NATIONAL job, he should find a party-friendly photo-op and beat up the wierd kid some more. Then fly back on that tax paid Air Force One after making a partisan Republican speech to raise money for his Republican partisan backers. Get home to that house his high-horse daddy was in before Dems dared to run and win against their right wing virtuousness, have himself a tax paid steak, get some sleep in that tax paid bed, and get ready to beat up on the wierd kid in the morning. Maybe tomorrow we'll call Limbaugh. Yeah. Bully.

10 20 06

The problem with being right concerning the big picture items of today's world is the frustration that comes with the perception that nobody seems to be listening until the dead bodies are long buried and the money is long gone. There is general consensus now that Iraq is another Viet Nam. Duh. The Bush administration has been, in the tradition of the Three Stooges (apology to Larry, Curly, Moe) stepping on the same rake....except it's the taxpayer, the citizen soldier, the working stiff, the lower rung who gets bonked in the noggin each time this fool steps on that rake. He does it over and over, and he has armies of fundamentalist stooges who seem to encourage the behavior. Even now, as wrong as even the administration leaders now are finally beginning to realize they've been, there are somewhere around 30% of American poll responders still in agreement with Bush policy. (Sheesh....makes the term "human intelligence" a bit of an oxymoron.).

So now, hopefully on to higher ground. Time to let Iraq go back to being third world. Let them self destruct. Who cares? Time to finish the job on terrorism. Time to re-arm ourselves with the kinds of weapons (perhaps not necessarily the exploding type) that might hopefully be effective against an enemy that we have been provoking and even encouraging over the last six years. Time to restock the treasury, rebuild our OWN infrastructure, re-erect the Trade Towers and look inward concerning what it means to have a DEFENSE department. Time to remove the unwise heads from Washington who have supported the inept lunacy of the Bush Administration and attempt to construct a more intelligent body of leadership who understands the underlying dynamics of contemporary times. We may actually have another shot at this with mid-term elections followed by 2008 elections. But....and I go just on historical lesson here.... I'm only half hopeful. Which is a half full perspective if you think about it.

10 16 06

So children...you want to get married. How nice. You're out of school and you're ready to go into the world and make your way. Here are some truths: On matters of money, your parents, whether they voted or not, have in the past elected the very worst politicians and administrators EVER into office, and as a result, you will have to give one third of everything you ever make (unless you cheat) to the government for the rest of your life to pay the debts run up by these people chosen to represent you. The state you choose to live in, it doesn't much matter which, will find ways to get from you six to eight percent for themselves, and a county and city will find ways to to get another six percent (you may see that as sales tax, but they're very inventive. They will sell your home for themselves if it comes to it, leaving you on the street). The money they collect by selling your home for "taxes" will go to pay themselves on the most part. Many of these "public servants" will send their children to schools YOUR children cannot attend. And they will write books with titles like, "It Takes A Village", which means you are expected to pay for somebody else's priviliges. You're the "village", at least when it comes time to pay up.

However if you manage to be resourceful and save, the government will inflate currency so that each year whatever CASH you may save will be worth between one and six percent less than the moment you save it, year after year, compounded downwardly. They inflate by printing more money for themselves, making your money less valuable. It's another form of taxation.

On matters of energy, I'm afraid I have no answers beyond a fervant suggestion to conserve. I know you probably will want to reproduce yourselves by having children, but so do the other 300 million who live in America, as do the over two billion other humans who occupy the earth. (At some point population will have to be contstrained.) Each of these humans will demand energy in growing amounts until we have no energy left to consume....at least in terms of the energy we know today. So I advise you to get very busy finding ways to heat water in ways we haven't thought of yet. And while doing it, take a look at any parking lot anywhere it our great land. See all that litter? That growing pile of human refuse represents the blight we are bringing to the very air you will breathe long after I'm gone, the very earth upon which you will rely. So while heating that water in that new way we discussed, try not to spoil things any more than you must. Pay special attention to the oceans.

On matters of war, avoid it if you can. If attacked, you will find that quick destruction of that attacker is the only solution. Be sure to destroy only the attacker and not fall into emotional or political tumult. Be at peace until and if that time comes. Keep your arms loaded, but always on safety until they must be used.

At the back end of life comes retirement. My best advice is that you not believe one single word anyone tells you about what they will do for you later. The cost will be high if you accept those proposals. Do what you can to plan ahead. However and at the same time, have faith that things might actually be there for you if you elect leadership to shepherd your great country and her resources well and wisely. Your parents failed at this lately, having installed such unwise national leadership. Here's wishing you better luck.

10 10 06

Ka BOOM! Doesn't much matter now whether the redneck Prez can pronounce the word NEW-CU-LER or not, nor does it matter whether the nuclear testing by N. Korea was gen-u-wine or or not. What matters is that the leader of N. Korea is obviously a nut-case. A crazy. A loon. We ask ourselves; how do we handle ourselves whenever in our day to day lives we encounter a gen-u-wine nut-case? Simple. We ignore him/her. We go on with our daily lives...move past without notice. We pay no attention. That is, of course, unless that particular crazy is doing harm or damage. Then we jail the nutcase in one fashion or another. Such should have been the case with the Saddam-of-Iraq nut-case. In that situation, our own nut-case crazed leadership spent billions of $$$ and thousands of lives (none related to them of course) to get mired into more crazeeeee. Saddam had not attacked us. Saddam was just an arrogant prick with arrogant prick sons and we didn't like the pictures of that crazee shooting rifles into the air or having his hand kissed by queues of sycophants. And we needed to kill something in our anger after 9/11. So we took the offensive. We took our eye off the Afghan/terrorism/Taliban ball. Lesson learned? Doesn't seem so. If this most recent N. Korea crazy blasts something that belongs to us (new-cu-ler or not) ...kills someone who belongs to us, then the DEFENSE department (hence the word DEFENSE....the very reason it exists) should be authorized to VAPORIZE and totally RUBBLE-IZE every square inch, every baby, every dog and every chicken within the confines of that particular nut-case and his environs. No mercy. Gone. Until that extreme, we just have to ignore these fruit cakes. Too many of them to otherwise handle.

But no. Instead, the Amercian people go to the polls and vote into leadership our own CRAZEEE nut-case who can't even pronounce the word "nuclear". Crazy world, eh?

10 3 06

I always loved Popeye the Sailor. One of my favorites. And lately I think Popeye might say, "Disgustipatin'". Yes....Popeye would be disgustipated. As I've been for some time. Here's why. The whole Foley scandal, atop all the lying, the equivocating, the games, the war-making is not enough to make right wingers think even a LITTLE. Forty percent of those polled stay right out there on the right wing. After all this, they refuse to even consider that MAYBE there is another point of view. Perhaps there is a more correct way. Maybe, as much as they disliked Kerry and any other alternative point of view to their own, there is a direction worth consideration. No. They cling to their thoughtless right wing. Child molestation, lies (Condi says she never saw that brief on Al Queida). The moralistic tone. The self righteous attitudes. The manipulation of people, treasury, nations, lives, the very soul of our nation. And still they cling without thought to the trouser legs worn by "public servants" who are taking them and their way of life toward a very ugly end. Those of us who ponder this consider that perhaps the moral intellect of America has shifted negatively. Maybe the collective intellect actually is only capable of handling simplistic, thoughtless lines of illogic. Hard to say. I ponder exactly this sometimes in the traffic when I wonder how some driving fools ever pass a driving test. But that may be another argument. For now.....I'm saddened. Perhaps Bluto is happy, but Popeye and I....well....we're just plain disgustipated.

9 26 06

I was heartened by Bill Clinton's little exhibition on a right wing TV station. We are, after all, living in times of complete intolerance and blamesmanship. We are, after all, living in times where the intolerant far right is fighting a literal war against the intolerant far far right. We live in times when an historical Papal reference concerning Islamic violence incites violence and threats of violence by Islamics who say they want to prove it ain't so...by committing violence against the Pope. Thinking people cringe every time our intolerant right wing president makes one of his intolerant right wing utterances. Here's a religious guy who wants to torture information out of insanely religous, far right people. And there is no discourse or communication because the very cornerstone of being right wing is to be immovable from an intolerant right wing position. So nobody thoughtful even tries. We live insanely, led by the wickedly unwise, pursued by the insanely religious right wing of Islam, and in the course so doing we are insanely threatening our very existence while clinging to insane right wing notions. Yet, we find the news blathering on about Bill Clinton's sane and understandable reaction to questions that surround all this insanity. Insane.

9 22 06

I'm just back from a short vacation to Las Vegas. Here's my advice; if you have an itch to gamble, just mail your money directly to the casino of your choice. They have rigged the gaming machines now to take only paper. If you slide paper money into the reader and quit before you've gambled it all away (there IS no winning) the machine will print a bar coded receipt. It becomes your responsibility to find out how to convert your remainder back into something spendable which probably involves dealing with a scanning machine inappropriately stamped ATM. The sound of coins dropping into the tray is simulated, and many of the newer machines simulate winning sounds even when there is no win to appropriately simulate. So save yourself some airfare and avoid if you can the throngs of tattooed giant baby stroller pushers and the hobbling elderly holdovers carrying oxygen bottles. Opt for home. Save the fuel, your time, your money, your sanity and have more fun eating well and exercising often.

9 13 06

My sister sent this. I suggested to her that it's good people are finally starting to come to their senses, but it may be too late for the country. Anyway, couldn't have said this better....so with all credit to Olberman, MSNBC and Countdown, here's a comment on 9/11 and our leadership;

msnbc.htm-g=6ab03f03-7a66-4378-8443-ef3afe82bab8&f=00&fg=email

9 11 06

War. It's the final tool of political will. Two peoples with opposing agenda employ all means to kill each other until one gives up and gives in. Today we commemorate the lost lives of the attacks on the World Trade Towers in NYC. The attackers were mostly Saudi. The attackers died in the act of attack....a suicide mission for those who carried out that act. Our thoughts are with those who died, those who responded. Now we are five years into a declared situation where elected officialdom uses the word "war". But who is the enemy? Islam? Taliban? Arabs? Or is the enemy a philosophical will that greys between political and religious? Leadership searches for tags and public relations-based jargon to deploy the will of our people to pay, to resist, to support a declared direction. None of us disagree that a political will infused with religion will never be acceptible to America, whether Taliban or Pat Robertson. The question becomes, if this is war, why are we not sending enough troops to kill the enemy? Why is there ongoing Congressional argument about the basics of this conflict? Why are we not killing the enemy using the arsenal we know we possess? Who is the enemy and how do we identify? What is the high ground? God, grant us wisdom.

8 31 06

Someone asked me as a long time observer of politics in general, what is my underlying political philosophy. It's this: We vote for the fools of your choice who will spend and pass laws concerning spending, and will pass laws governing how much YOU pay in taxes to pay for that spending which he will tout as his great victory and legacy, in turn making him and only him the obvious choice in the next election. So.... pay those taxes without complaint. YOU are in charge of both fool and foolishness, and if we do nothing differently than we've been doing, we deserve both the fool in the office and all the taxes he can levy against us, and all the debt he will mount for all the wars he will support and bridges to nowhere he might provide.....for US to pay for, of course.

08 28 06

We live in the oddest of times. Consider this: you are a passenger aboard flight 5191 Lexington to Atlanta, early morning. As it happens you are also a private pilot and know the Lexington airport. This morning you have been through sniffers, searchers, checkers, dogs, guys with guns, over-priced parking and all manor of passenger abuse just because you are an American air passenger. And now you notice that your Canadian Regional Jet is lined up to take off on the wrong runway. You try to get the attention of the attendant. You finally have to raise your voice to be heard. The attendant tells you that the plane is about to take off and forcefully you tell the attendant that this is the wrong runway. He forcefully tells you to calm down. The attendant treats you like a disruptive terrorist. You yell louder that this runway is wrong and you know for a fact that the plane cannot take off from here. The attendant bangs on the cockpit and contacts the pilot, then you are shuttled off to terrorist hell, and you have just saved the lives of fifty people. But nobody knows that. The error goes unexposed. You become the bad guy.

Such is the irony of Iraq. Some thoughtful people are telling Pilot Bush that the plane cannot take off here. The pilot and attendant Cheney along with attendant Rumsfeld and hostess Lieberman ignore you. Or perhaps they find ways to make you look like a crazy. They run up the engines and.....welcome to Iraq. Now the people are telling Pilot Bush and the attendants that this crash is spending good lives and money after bad. The real and ongoing problems of dealing with crazed terrorists is being ignored with this distraction. They of course relegate you to ..... well....maybe one of those crazy liberals?

8 23 06

There are a couple of schools of thought concerning Iraq particularly and the middle east in general. The first is....no matter what we do, no matter how long we stay, no matter how much we pour into the effort, the moment we leave.... the middle east will implode. First thoughts are that we better to do it now and cut our losses. The second is that we must continue the fight until it is won. There is some ambiguity on the meaning of "winning", but the notion that Iraq is salvagable and the middle east is open to new political direction is at the heart of that argument. Never mind that in the middle east, politics and religion are basically read from the same document. So we institute today a continuation of the American draft. This version is the so-called backdoor draft where veterans are called back into service after their tours of duty are completed. Some of these guys have seen four and five tours in combat. No matter. Back they go. More guts for the glory. Meanwhile we avoid the draft directly, we shun profiling in the name of political correctness, and we take every single wrong road where Iran, Syria, Lebanon and N. Korea are concerned. We burn fuel wholesale in the doing of all this. We burn down treasury to levels of mathmatical debt that certainly strain my understanding. Not that we were not warned early on from books and movies that G. Bush et al will spend to bankrupcy and beyond as he always has in his business deals. Never mind that wrong headedness is the one observable characteristic of this scary bunch of "leaders". So what to do. As an average American on the sideline all I seem to be able to think about is how I can defend myself when the hordes arrive. What will life be like without fuel? What difficulties will I encounter when I and all my fellow citizens are broke and the economy is broken? What will life be like decades after these bad decisions have been made and initiated. So back to the question.....do we stay or do we go? Iraq didn't knock down the Trade Towers. G.W. Bush said so himself just this week. Iraq had "nothing" to do with that. The one guy that has some responsibility for that is running around loose in Pakistan, making the occasional taunting video tape. Iran is making nuclear material in a surprisingly unveiled plan to erase Israel. Lebanon is smashed. Hizbollah is taunting. Meanwhile the mess, the oil slicks, the war rubble, the political fighting just gets worse. May I say it? All because of the wrong headedness of unwise leadership. G. W. Bush. And we have two more years of it to endure.

8 20 07

I'm getting an increasing amount of email lately exposing the idea that Muslims are trying to KILL us. Duh. Welcome back. Hope you enjoyed your nap. While we avoid "profiling", while we cling to "political correctness", while we hold to the notion that 'somebody else' will have to fight the good fight, it is becoming more clear even to the most dim among us that dogmatic religious war has been initiated, that the enemy is not a uniformed enemy of a particular state but of a cleric-dogmatic nature, and that this enemy is not settling for capitulation. It wants anyone who thinks alternatively to THEIR particular cult to die. Harsh talk and I apologize for it. But that's the bottom line. This is nothing new, except perhaps for the fact that this movement has now taken Spain, will soon have France, may be able to get a foothold in Great Britain, and once in possession of nuclear (not pronounced new-cue-ler) weapons this cult will attempt to deliver. You may be one of the ones to depart the earth in this particular conflict. Never mind that this was avoidable. Never mind that unwise leadership has expended our defenses on unnecessary fronts. Never mind that you feel relatively safe. The pieces are now in place to go in a very undesireable direction. The following are my particular thoughts on finding an answer;

elect wise leaders (NOT Bush, NOT religious zealots, not rightwingers)

Strangle the enemy's economy. (Have you noticed that the Hizbollah is paying war reparations to the Lebanese in AMERICAN DOLLARS? Do you realize that every gallon you pump into your SUV is a contribution to that treasury and a cost to your own security?)

Develop both alternatives to energy and a conservation program that works.

Prepare to DEFEND. This means....NO pre emptive warfare. It means that, WHEN this enemy attacks, we INTELLIGENTLY find the source of the attack, hunt them down and eleminate them without mercy.

This next one is a tough one: Prepare to live a lower standard of life. You are not untouchable in the scheme of things. Your children are not shielded because you have developed a successful fiscal position. War is far bigger than your concerns for self. You will be sacrificing one way or the other. This will go on until the hearts and minds of those who currently are convinced that the elimination of YOU and those things that consist of YOUR sense of curltural normalcy are eliminated. This war is loseable. We might have avoided it, at least temporarily, if we did not elect unwise leadership. But the majority of Americans went for the fight and the fight is on and now the price must be paid. It probably won't be pretty. We still may have a chance to get through this "on the cheap", but we have to get rid of unwise leadership before we can consider those options as viable.

The good news? The politics of hatred is always fatal. Muslims are fractured even more than Democrats and Republicans. There are Shiites, Taliban, Sunni, Kurd, Asian, Poynesian, Western strains and left alone, they fight to the death among each other. Whatever they may believe of an after-life, they soil where they live. Given their self-destructive countenance, it gives one pause to wonder why an enemy would try to prevent them from self-destruction. But then, that takes wise and thoughtful leadership. And if you have found ANY kind of common thread in this blog, unwise leadership has been the over-riding lament.

8 17 06

At this stage in the administration's tenure, it's somewhat harder to find a true Bush supporter. If you took a survey, 25% of those asked would say the sun sets in the east, so at 30%, G.W. Bush basically stands alone with 5 to 10 percent of the hardcore right in pursuit of bringing democracy to third world mentalities at the cost of the masses (but not themselves). And they stand alone in their posture to kill people in war-making behaviors and attitudes while protectng "life" in the laboratory by disallowing medical research. (This of course will be corrected as soon as these blinkered elephants are swept from office.) However.....rather than visiting all the foibles of a lame and nearly dead-duck administration, perhaps it's time to consider what we must do to resurrect America in the future.

One: elect viable and wise leadership. Two: conserve natural resources (this includes cleaning up the messes we've made of our environment). Three: fund research for the slow replacement of a petroleum based economy. Four: withdraw from the notion that America can influence wrong headed leaders abroad. Five: make realistic those elements of economy that takes from one group and gives to another. Six: Study prospects for reducing waste at the government level without killing services that are obviously of civil benefit. Seven: Reinstate the draft in some form such that all people (both sexes and all socio-economic levels) over the age of eighteen may rediscover themselves as citizens. Eight: strengthen and enforce immigration laws eliminating any benefit of illegally moving into the U.S. . This includes eliminating the automatic citizenship of a child just for the act of having been born within the border. Nine: begin to realize that Americans, be they special, are not any more or less subject to the physical laws of the universe than anyone else. Ten: Reinvent the judicial system such that laws and justice are prevelant over status and privilege. Eleven: prepare for the next war, not the last one. This includes the support of education for those who prove capable of making use of education, whcih has nothing to do with wealth and social influence.

8 15 07

OK Mr. Lieberman. Nice try. You got three terms and now you have a chance to do some REAL good. The majority of the people in your state voted against you in your own primary, ostensibly indicating that the majority (and I concur nationally) that the war is in disfavor by a majority of people, at least as it is being conducted. Now you can be the graceful elder statesman and bow out. (Grace not a noted mark of the current crop of leadership) The Dems will need a majority to short-circuit the Bush foolishness over the next two years while the posturing takes place to figure out what we must do and under whose leadership we will do it. You have been supporting the problem, the people you "represent" have now told you that you have been supporting the problem, and the people have used the ONE tool they have to make their case. They voted you out, telling you in a friendly and respectful way that you are out of touch with their wishes. As it stands you look like a schoolchild who doesn't get another chance to pin the tail on the donkey, so don't be an ass, Joe. We luv ya. Get out. Do something fun. Be constructive. Think about the positions you've taken and understand how an opposing position can be bona fide and not something to be Bush-Bashed just because you don't agree. (How very conservative.) And remember.....Joe.....YOU are representing others....YOUR particular opinion is not the primary one to be considered. You failed to represent, and now the voter has (wisely) indicated that it's time for you to depart the field. Respectfully.

8 13 06

Yesterday in the news it was revealed the British, whom until now has been exemplary in the handling of terrorist crazies choosing intelligent targeting over all-out carpet bombing of intenational indescrimination, did not want to prematurely move on the "liquid bomb" terrorists until they had enough actual evidence to convict them. Of course the Bush administration, always wanting to be cowboy-hero (understandable with such low approval numbers) pressed the issue and our British friends caved. They rounded up the airline-theatening perpetrators previously under long time surveillance (a tip of the international hat to Scotland Yard et al) and now, thanks to the usual antics of Bush etc, they may have to let them all go free for lack of legally useful evidence. Another instance of just plain bad management by U.S. "elected" officials. In the duscussion of this I find that the conservative posture is almost always inpenetrable. It does not seem to matter what works, what does not, what is safe, what is not, what is RIGHT, what is not. What matters is that a conservative ne'er sway from a posture no matter how misguided. What matters is that a conservative be self-convinced that whatever his or her posture might be is the 'right' one, and all else opposed is just plain wrong and deserving of ridicule, of name calling (those dirty despictable 'liberals'). And this may be the very base of our contemporary national and perhaps world troubles. After all, cannot the Taliban be deemed a conservative party? Cannot the Hezbollah? Cannot the Iranians, Koreans, Syrians? Each unswaying in their wrong-headedness. Each dug into a posture of my-way or no-way. And so a question of concern arises as to how to shift toward a more tolerant world before we destroy it altogether in spite of ourselves. And isn't it ironic that the very tolerance required is a regarded liberal posture? Maybe that's why "conservatives" often are associated with a particular religion.....without it, there is no basis for their intolerant posture in the first place.....just recalcitrant self perpetuating intolerance.

Don't get me wrong...I want to hang every single terrorist by the scrotum the instant I am, beyond a reasonable doubt, confident he or she is actually guilty. But the concept of pre-emptive strike has proved woefully misguided and beyond unwise, darkened even with shades of stupid. Thus the use of intelligence is going to be far more useful than WWII bombs etc in the theatre of anti terror. And it strikes me that "intelligence" and "conservative" are proving not a matched couple. (Right Mr. Lieberman?)

6 27 06

So there we have it. The day's news suggests Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current crazy for Al-Qaida, has called for all-out war declaring that war (he calls it holy-war using the term Jihad) will not cease until "Islam reigns from Spain to Iraq". It doesn't get more definitive....it doesn't get more dogmatic-intolerant-crazed (unless you somehow compare the relatively peaceful but equally intolerant notions of the likes of Pat Roberson et al). At any rate, he calls for all who follow his call to become martyrs (die for the cause). He says all the world is their battlefield...there will be no cease-fires. So this latest unambiguous declaration begs some national questions: do we begin drafting and training young men and women now for inevitable ongoing conflict? Can the all volunteer army brush this off while the rest of us buy SUV's and go to Walmart? Do we take them seriously at this stage or wait for a direct attack on Philadelphia? Do we finish off Iraq now regardless of outcome to free up our otherwise engaged troops? Do we dust off the nuclear bombs, learn how to pronounce the word, and begin helping middle eastern civilizations and their antiquity gain wholesale martydom? How will all this be paid for given we have WASTED our treasury on conflict started over faulty intelligence? Do we tax? Borrow? Lots and lots and lots of both of those? So many questions.

A few things are clear to me. Congress is completely broken and self-paralyzed. National leadership is lost, unaware, and seems to clumsily get in its own way. Conflict and engagement to some degree will likely be ongoing for years and at some point the carnage is likely to be surprisingly bloody. U.N. will remain mostly useless. Allies will not participate unless they feel both threatened and unwilling to become Islamic. Given all this was totally avoidable is no longer relevant, it's too late now to blame, criticize, ridicule. The stage seems set. We've been prancing with our national chests poked out for decades. Now we will find out just what America is made of. My guess: it's made of the likes of George W. Bush and his unthinking, sneering, misdirected and privileged manner. And that's the part that scares me most of all.

6 25 06

Pretty bad, eh? Middle East is boiling over with hatred and war. Economy is even deeper in debt. Trade agreements broken completely down. The world describes America as "intransigent". Fuel prices highest in history. Korea and Iran poking fingers in the western eye. Small factions like Hizbollah perpetually biting our ankles. Comedians having a field day at the expense of foolish elected officials. Voters who voted for pro-war representatives now finally coming to their senses and taking steps to voting them out (Good bye Mr. Lieberman...we liked you but your pro-war views are WAY out of step with the people you represent). And leadership says the current course is the course to be stayed? Pretty bad. With veto, medical research is stiff-armed, states are forced to take the task on themselves. And frankly, I'm personally embarrassed by a set of political circumstances unaware enough to elect, then re-elect the likes of George W. Bush in the last two election cycles. The bad news? Lots more death, lots more debt, lots more right-wing closed-mindedness, lots more political gamesmanship, lots more war, lots more hatred, wider economic chasms, lots more inflation, lots more I-told-you-so books, lots more bad decisions to be endured before this period of American misdirection can be reversed.

6 20 06

A Prayer: May each member of the Bush family soon need the medicine not available from the research not to take place, vetoed by the hands of the freakishly conservative and opinionated George W. Bush. May new law pass after the Neocon movement has proven to be ridiculously pious and narrow such that medicines which ARE available are denied to anyone who voted for the freakishly conservative and opinionated George W. Bush. May wars that the freakishly conservative and opinionated George W. Bush spawned by his freakish social perspectives sweep his own family and supporters into the path of personal dangers otherwise completely avoidable had he been given no part in American direction. And may the Bush family be denied any use of future energy systems made possible only after more reasonable leadership finally takes wise and orderly action.

If John F. Kennedy had gone the direction of George W. Bush, his dialogue may have sounded thus: "I will veto any effort of sending man to the moon and return to earth by the end of this decade. We have more important things to do such as engage in foreign conflicts, avoid medical research, discourage the search for alternative fuels, ignore global environment warnings, fight with each other over abortion, marriage, flag burning and other issues. We must argue amongst ourselves in the Legislative Branch endlessly and to no meaning. That is our challenge as Americans. Now excuse me while I take a huge fuel burning aircraft to go on vacation."

6 12 06

Drinks all around, everyone. Gold stars by the executives' names. The deficit is only three hundred BILLION. This year. Added to last year's. All added to NEXT year's. All added to the previous six years tally. Twenty five percent borrowed from and financed by the Chinese.....who want us to stand easy with N. Korea. Who do not want sanctions against mad dog dictators bent on firing up the nuclear machine. Who are ready and willing to more forcefully tell us how to begin behaving. Since we owe them big money. Great job. Big pats on the back. NOT four hundred twenty five billion. Only three hundred billion added to the already gargantuan tally of debt. Now THAT'S what we call leadership. Never mind that the neocons have managed to outspend any and all administrations in the history of man, turning a surplus given them when they first sat down in the big chair to a war torn, fuel deprived economy so deep in debt and bungled war activity that most folks can't even understand the vastness of the number. Nice job. The folks who voted you into office must be so very proud. You may now continue to pound your neocon chest in a churlish and self righteous manner.

7 12 06

Like our own society, the middle east has its share of Cretans. These are the people who destroy, kill, counterbalance civility, deal in destructive products and behaviors, advocate dangerous demands in the name of religion etc. This will never change, and as long as we equate terrorism to these sub humans we will NEVER leave the middle east in our intervention efforts. Rather than conducting a war against terrorism, we are acting in our own out-of-favor style to attempt to steer behavior of a culture over which we do not exercize control, even at gunpoint. We waste our resources, our lives, our time. At this point, in our fourth year of "war"....longer now than WWII, we are no closer to an idealized goal of westernizing these Cretans than the day George Bush unilaterally and pre-emptively dropped his first bomb (and missed) on a culture of which he had little knowledge, based on misinformation and hubris. Even more disturbing....within our own culture we still have citizens supporting this ill advised direction of America, closed minded to the consequences, closed minded to the alternatives, closed to suggestion. Most of us know the war against terrorism will continue henceforth and forever now that the hornet's nest has been stick-poked and domestic fortune will favor the prepared. And preparation will cost resources. And resources are diminishingly available. Again.....the MOST UNWISE LEADERSHIP in American history has got us to this place. The question within this mess becomes....can we EVER recover? Optimism alone will not be enough. A single election will not take us back to a level and sane place.

7 5 06

Whether you agree or not, you must admit that America no longer has the respect as the respected Wizard of Peace (avoiding the Oz reference) such that rogue nations might tread lightly in the spirit of self preservation born of unknown consequence. We have, under the "leadership" of virtual morons, expended all authority in frivolous pursuit, blown up bombs along with many innocents, expended the bodies of our patriots and shown our Achille's tendons nakedly to the world.....and we CONTINUE to do it with uninformed and unwise lunacy. So N. Korea feels comfortable lobbing some "test" missiles over Japan, Iran feels comfortable sticking its pointy radioactive finger into the world's eyes, and the "world's policeman" has no badge, no gun, no uniform....at least in the eyes of those who otherwise might have given some thought to it. So we have thus begun the slow ceding of greatness and leadership, just as England, Spain, the Dutch etc have in historical terms. To whom, we do not yet know. Such will be the Bush legacy.

7 3 06

So.....what will be the consequence, and what would be the punishment if this president (uncapitalized p appropriately) does not follow the now declared rule of law (by the very Supreme Court he packed conservatively himself) but rather continues as if he is king and dictator of America and not the elected representative of the people under rule of law? How will we know if he manages to muzzle free press?

6 8 06

First....congratulations, well done and medals all around to Bush, his minions and all concerned for the termination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and may that bastard and his supporters fry in Arab hell for all eternity. Delighted that, for once, we hit a target of importance and not an orphanage or hospital etc. Next, forget not that this war was started by G. W. Bush on the strength of several smokescreens often ignited by people such as Colin Powell who, knowing better, held his nose in the doing. In other words, a victory is expected at this point but the initiation of the debacle as a whole will not be forgotten by historians. The other Saudi bastard, Bin Laden, is still breathing earthly air, and HE is more affiliated with the destruction of life and property in New York on September eleventh than all others. Once he no longer shares space with us on earth, this matter should be closed, America should leave the cesspool of the mideast and get back to creating alternative (replacement) fuel sources which will ultimately wean us from petrochemicals and de-finance the crazed zealots of Allah (or any other cult) who seem hell bent to use their natural resources to inflame the world rather than assure their own long term futures.

5 18 06

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/05/go_mike_hayden.html

5 15 06

How naive I was. I recall at the time sending Jimmy Carter my advice on the matter in a nice letter to him. I was in my thirties. I offered to let the government keep all the social security they had collected from me up to that point if they would just stop charging me SS taxes. I was in small business at the time and was paying fifteen percent or so just for that alone. I was also paying corporate taxes, unemployment taxes, state and federal income of course, city and county fees and so many others I could barely keep up with it all. Then one day the IRS sent a little weasel to "audit" me. He was with my accountant for a day or two and after weaseling through my records he left when he found me compliant, but I was very pissed off about the intrusion. I recall that day making the decision to get on the other side of the tax issue. At one point in my subsequent working life I actually worked directly for the IRS. I learned one hell of a lot while there too. The fact is, government abuses the taxpayer at all levels. County, state, federal. Some in government think the taxpayer is a kind of goose to be plucked...for the goose's own good, of course. A golden goose if you happen to receive the goose's dough. And ya know what? That's about the size of things. And even more remarkably, the taxpayer/goose/voter staggers to the polls and votes for the very same sumbitches over and over again. The cycle goes on, sometimes directly against the taxpayers' best interests (history will not be kind to little G. Bush). So eventually I bailed out of my small business interests and got on a different side of the issue. Things haven't changed at all since those Jimmy Carter years. The Tom Delays of this world know how to soak the taxpayers for every nickel possible. Also the Abramoffs, the Bushes, the Gores, you name the name and those guys are oozing taxpayer greenbacks. YOUR greenbacks. Does not matter the political party. For the public's own good, of course. And if that isn't enough, they spend to deficits so high most people can't even perceive the number or understand the size of the debt. And the taxpayer gets to foot the bill for the interest on that, too. And if that doesn't do it, they print money and inflate...and spend that too. And the Congress dips into Social Security, supposedly a trust for the taxpayer schmuck's retirement, and they make war with it, leaving behind a piece of paper promising to pay it back 'sometime'. And my guess is the taxpayer will stagger to the polls and vote the same sumbitches right back into office. They always have, so it's a pretty damned good bet they'll keep doing it. Moral: the taxpayer/voter deserves everything he or she gets.

5 12 06

Pres. Bush will address the nation concerning immigration. Those are the headlines. Will you listen? Me either. Know why? Because this president has told us so many things that are untrue that we don't believe him anymore. We don't believe the spin of his administration either. We have to wait until all this stuff is filtered through several layers of media vivisection and see what smells ok at the end of the process. And usually it's not very much. This level of manipulation of the people who elected them, the people who count on them, the people who pay them is dangerous. Why we let it go on is a mystery to many of us, but we do. Whether in the face of loyalty, faith in our country, whatever patriotic spin we can apply, we WANT to believe. But for the moment, we just can't. Nor can the nations around the world. The MOST VALUABLE asset a leader can possess is not available to this administration. The sad part is, the people are the worse off for it. A real shame. Still, we can take heart that the framers of our system saw that now and again a fool can find his way to the big chair, and lucky for us the time is limited. So it is for President Bush. We'll let him blather, tune in to the Comedy channel and wait to see what it all means later. Our experience is: it won't mean very much.

5 2 06

I was talking a little politics with my (conservative) neighbor who suggested the voters will take care of our problems. I told her that I have NO FAITH whatsoever in the American voter. They are, by their latest unwise collective vote, the ones who got us in the mess we're currently in, and will continue toward ever more deeply. A recent poll indicated that fully two thirds of Americans polled between ages 18 and 24 could not select Iraq from a map of about eight countries of that region. One third of those polled could not find Louisiana on a map. Two thousand four hundred and three AMERICANS have been killed in Iraq and tens of thousands wounded in Bush's war of WMD/war on terror, and the big interest among the American voter seems to be high gas prices (better get used to it), the right to drive a Hummer, and perhaps what religion other people practice. When it comes time to vote, if the "voter" votes at all, the "voter" often scarcely knows the candidates and what they really stand for. The "voter" votes regional, religious, or even perhaps family traditions. And what we get is......G. W. Bush et al. We get debt, war, foolishness, energy distaster, Congressional shenanigans, splitting of the nation, ugliness in a time we so very desperately need leadership. We will not get it by the vote. We might get it accidentally. But we will not vote it intentionally. I'm personally convinced now that we just are not collectively wise in that way. I cannot say whether we ever were, but I can say NOW we are not. We may be able by virtue of greed and innovation to move beyond some problems, but in some cases the GREAT DECIDER decides WRONG, and the outcomes are irreversible.....certainly so for at least two thousand four hundred and three people now dead while G. W. Decider yuks it up at the annual press party. Ah well. As long as he's happy.

4 27 06

Has it occurred to you lately that perhaps America has lost her way? For example....if a hard working Kansas couple have their farmhouse knocked down by a tornado (common in those parts) and they do not have insurance for that contingency, is the government (taxpayer) responsible for replacement? Is FEMA responsible to go get them and put them up at the Hilton? Does it make any difference what color the farmers are? Are taxpayers responsible for stockpiling every kind of serum in large quantity in the event of swine flu? Bird flu? Dog doo flu? Shu fly flu? Is the taxpayer required to keep business afloat if the business is large enough to do national damage if it goes under? Is the taxpayer required to subsidize the national consumer body politic for non elastic commodities such as ....say....gasoline? Are American taxpayers required to remove tin-horn dictators from foreign countries whether friend or foe? Are taxpayers required to fund politicians who are forever trying to get re re re re re elected? Are taxpayers responsible for the building of city walls, border fencing, levies, trade towers, bridges to unimportant places and tourist trains to Mississippi casinos?

You probably said no to one or more of those examples. But then if something hits close to your pocket, you might have taken issue. Truth is, none of these areas are bona fide areas for taxpayer responsibility unless the safety of the nation is involved directly. And slick lawyers are sure to find a way to weave into their courtroom arguments exactly that. And the Supreme Court, stacked now with ideological forest/tree blindness, seems willing to play since funds seem to be unending in the world of "who's responsible". Eventually of course we run out of resources, run out of money, attract morefolks on the gimme side than the paying side, and the whole system becomes....well.....a pandering collection of folks complaining that the 'others' should be taking care of them, along with the necessary funding, and fixing the elements in their lives over which they have lost (or never manage to gain) adult control. I leave it to you to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing for America, generally speaking. (Hint....a social obligitory system hasn't worked anywhere in history yet. But somehow humans keep trying it out under different banner.)

Ask not what your coun.... now how did that go again?

4 25 06

Well now....while Congressman Larry, Senator Curly, and President Mo fight it out over who has gas, who pays for gas, who gets gas, and who is gouging for gas, the base problem remains if not worsens. Non Americans control petrochemical based energy. They determine price, supply, who gets what. And the ONLY way at this point that America has available to get out from under the worsening problem is to invest in ALTERNATIVE energy development. If nothing but human peddle power, we have no choice but to get started on SOME direction NOW. Leadership is required NOW. We waste time thumping each other in the chest. We should have begun this in the seventies when we were shown our domestic vulnerability. Instead we adopted an SUV culture and moved to HUMMER envy. Dumb. And since we, through President Mo, have spent our treasury down to a negative nine trillion dollars to make war and not science, we no longer have surplus revenues to attack the problem as seriously as, say, getting to the moon. Dumb. So....it becomes now a citizen's requirement to vote out anyone who does not apply themselves to the BASE problem NOW. Time to write a letter to get alternative energy systems in place NOW. Otherwise, well...I suggest you get yourself a burka, zuytuna and jubba, face Mecca and bow. Your life is going to seriously change.

4 23 06

Just out of curiosity, if you voted for G. W. Bush in either of the last two general elections, would you do it again based on what you know now? (I'm guessing you would...and WILL vote for someone of similar non-wisdom..... and am guessing America is in for YEARS of more of the same as a result.)

Oil Producers, Consumers Say Prices Will Stay High for Years

April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Oil producers and consumers said oil prices will stay high during the next few years before companies add crude output and refining capacity. Crude oil will average $60 to $65 a barrel

4 20 06

Let's see....Bush tells mouthpiece (tax payer paid press secretary). Mouthpiece tells press. Press tells voter. Voter buys it. Voter votes Bush. Bush lies to mouthpiece. Mouthpiece lies to press. Press lies to voter. Voter starts to catch on. Mouthpiece loses credibility. Bush fires mouthpiece. New mouthpiece tells press. Press tells voter. Voter votes Republican as if nothing ever happened.

Franz Kafka, E A Poe, George Orwell all would have such great material in such days of political lies, wars, death, debt, more lies. But apparently souls with open eyes are no longer around for purposes of communication or entertainment. So to synopsize; the war is going great, economy is up, Bin Laden is marginalized, plenty of fuel, America is strong, the world loves us, Bush is wise and Rumsfeld is sending troops on the right course. Rainbows and chocolate snax, the world is all good. Just listen to the new mouthpiece tell the press to tell you so. And...... trust me...you'll believe it.

3 28 06

Illegal immigration? All of a sudden our mouth-foaming war-making national attention turns to illegal immigration? And hundreds of thousands of illegals drag out the flag of Mexico (or where-ever) and PROTEST in our STREETS that America is unfair not to let millions more aliens into the country to live and work, absorb social services, create babies etc.? In the first place, laws passed and unenforced is no law at all. Passing more laws dealing with an immigration problem resulting from ignoring past laws will have no meaning. The REAL problem, and this problem will continue to go unaddressed and largely unspoken, is population growth. Any animal growing togreater numbers than a physical environment can support will force itself into a situation of natural attrition. Pretty dark stuff. But then the truth of things is often dark, so we just don't deal with it until the darkness is in our face. POPULATION. That's the base problem. The BASE of social ills and difficulty comes from too many people each with all the hopes, needs and dreams we associate with current humanity. No amount of opinion, politics, social rule changing is going to change the effects of population on environment. It makes no difference if the population is increased by allowing the overpopulations of failed nations into our own landmass, or making babies in logrythmic numbers to the point beyond environmental efficacy. Either way society will eventually have to deal with the issue of population. My first guess is later than sooner given the sensitive nature of the issue. It's going to take courage. And courage we do not currently have.

3 26 06

Condi Rice....company gal. When asked about all the elements of the Iraq war being totally wrong, her answer was basically that it was worth the thousands of American lives and $350,000,000,000 in American treasury to get rid of the one bad apple, Saddam Hussein. Sheesh. If we as taxpayers have to pay that kind of price in money and blood (no blue blood) to get rid of every bad apple that shows up in this world, we don't stand a chance. And how is it that so much money can be cavalierly spent on something so unworthy at the same time folks in the know speculate that Social Security will go broke for so many people who are forced to pay all their working lives? How is it we can piss away so much money in the face of General Motors, Delta, American Airlines, Dephi, so many others are going belly up by rules imposed for the sake of world economy? What kind of transitional plan is this? Then Condi says to Tim, "we have to put things in perspective". Damn right lady. But it's YOUR perspective that needs MAJOR overhaul. YOU are the one who doesn't get it, you who spout the crazed Bush doctrine without considering the people who pay, the people who die, the people represented, the people who suffer every time you make yet another "error". Is it too much to ask that you at least THINK ABOUT what it is you're doing? The resources and lives you expend are not YOURS.

3 25 07

I sometimes get quoted on national TV, specifically CNN. Mostly write-in kind of stuff. The last communication summed up the future of the Presidency. This President has said he will pass his expensive mess to the next administration which will inherit the Bush problem of getting troops out of Iraq. (Wasn't that his scheme back in Viet Nam days? Let someone ELSE do the hard part?) So the question arises: who might this new President be? Hard to know, BUT....and this is the context of my last communication to CNN.....if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton, the Democrats will (deservedly) LOSE the 2008 election and jeopardize the shift toward political center in the House and Senate. Mitt Romney can and will beat Hillory by three percent or more. (Biden would be so much wiser a choice for the Dems.) So while General Motors melts itself down, while the ONE nine/eleven criminal slips through incompetent judicial fingers, while federal debt sloshes to the next high water mark, while troops are killed in distant places that have little to do with anything at all where America is concerned, while the courts move from center to deep right, and while the borders pour thousands of new potential federal dependents into the country daily, the Democrats seem hell-bent to blow yet ANOTHER opportunity to bump things to center by advocating a leftist nominee who's already proven unelectable by every national poll to date. Life is just too delicious sometimes.

3 23 06

Just when I thought it could not get more Kafka-esque...the Bush administration, or perhaps more specifically the Cheney administration has charged that the media reports only bad news concerning Iraq. Now call me the eternal pessimist, but I don't recall blowing out any candles atop a cake concerning celebration of war. With heads lopped off, daily deaths from road bombs, suicide bombs, rocket launched bombs, good money being spent over justifications long proved untrue, a country...maybe even a region....in chaos and probably in civil war, a hemorrage of American lives, blood and dollars, several news people dead or injured, almost a hundred thousands service people dead or injured, Osama still at large, and most domestic issues going either ignored or unfunded, what good news are we talking about? The truth, and hopefully the media still attempts the truth now and again, is that this is a bad news war run by a bad news administration sopped with scandal, bad judgement, ego and arrogance. If they want some good news, they could resign and let cooler heads take it from here. THAT would certainly be welcome news. But gentleman, if you ARE the problem, don't be pointing a blaming finger. It's just not becoming. You've already shown the earth you cannot lead, you cannot handle international relationships, and you cannot tolerate alternative views. Don't further telegraph the fact that you are deluded in your world view. The rest of us have more sense than to buy into any more of the foolishness.

3 21 06

It was sad really...this last Presidential press conference. He delivered his sa-mo sa-mo, and then the questions came. The answers indicated a truth. This job is too big for this man. He has thrust us into deep debt (bankruptcy?) while telling us that cutting taxes is good for the economy, even in spite of the deeper and deeper debt the very policy he advocates takes us daily. He has taken us to a trillion dollar war costing thousands of Amercian lives....and even as he lately has suggested it was in error.....a mistake, he doggedly persists going down that same mistaken road. A bigger man would have made adjustments in the face of those mistakes. This one, a small man, stays on the wrong road thinking that, as he moves farther and farther from his destination, eventually he will get there. And it would be just fine if it was ONLY him. Who would care? But as President he takes three hundred million people with him. And their hard earned money. And the infrastructure of America. And the credibility of our nation in the eyes of the world. And to some degree our ability to defend ourselves if a real situation were to arise. A sadder picture is very hard to imagine. For him. For us.

3 19 06

Nine trillion. 9X10 to the twelfth. 9,000,000,000,000 dollars. Any way you write it, it is one big number. And next year the fearless leadership will increase the debt limit again. Know why? Because they spend more than they take in (we can't say "earn" here). Know why? Because they cut taxes for the wealthy. Know why? Because the wealthy are the ones putting these fools into office in the first place by funding aristocracy (you don't think it's a coincidence that a son of a president is a president.....AND a governor, do you?) Know why? Because the voting population has stopped being cautious about its own liberty. Like sheep, we are allowing ourselves to be slaughtered. Know why? Me either.

3 17 06

America will strike first, says Bush in new security plan.....By Sam Knight

America will continue to pre-emptively attack its enemies and Iran is now the greatest danger facing the United States, George Bush announced today in a new version of his "National Security Strategy". In the 49-page document released four days before the third anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, Mr Bush gave a resolute, upbeat account of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and said his Administration would continue to confront states before they had a chance to attack America.

What further proof might you need that this President is crazy, unwise, unfamiliar with American longstanding philosophies, or all of these? Has this King James Bible thumping Pentecostal ever heard the phrase "live by the sword"? Shall we go ahead and change the name to the Department of Offense? (On the upside, the comedians can use the material from a renamed government organization with the nickname DOO.)

3 16 06

Nine trillion dollars. Your government, the government you voted into office to look after your best interest, is going to increase the national debt for the fourth time over Bush's watch to nine trillion dollars. If you are a family of five, you would have to send to the federal treasury $150,000 on top of your regular tax burden to bring things back to "balanced".....still below the surplus we held the day Bush took office. There is more bad news in that American energy prospects, manufacturing hamstringing, outsourcing business mentality, profit before infrastructure, expediency before leadership, arrogance, hubris and unwise political vision will without question bring Congress back to the well, YOUR well, next year for an even bigger number. And they will offer the same tired unimaginative argument..... that they "cannot shut down government", perhaps in the same sentence suggesting a Congressional pay raise and an extended war posture. Without understandable reasoning, thirty four percent of Americans polled still support this administration. And that may be the most stunning number of all.

3 13 06

Yesterday's broadcast of Meet The Press made me consider pessimism, optimism and the importance of the nuances of the differences. On the show was Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (my choice for the next President) and George Allen of Virginia, both Presidential hopefuls. Biden many moons ago warned exactly what would happen in Iraq if troop strength were not increased. This was touted at the time as pessimistic and unnecessary. He was proved right. Lately generals of the armed forces, heads of state, George Allen et al are painting rosy scenarios concerning Iraq. Biden is saying; if the Iraqi elections don't take hold and the warring factions of Iraq don't mend fences and form a working government, "game over". He offers a time line of about this summer at which point America will be spending resources and lives to "contain" the civil war that will ultimately take place. Once again the Republicans take issue touting Iraq is "making progress". All this to suggest that at some point, even though it is far more comfy from our Lazyboy's to enjoy once again the moment of the Republican rosy scenario, we have real issues to deal with as a result of our actions. Biden will be proved right and the Republicans will continue to blather flowers. What concerns me is that there are still people in the country who choose to believe Republicans even though they are completely discredited and cannot be counted on to relate the truth of things. (Are you going to believe us or your lying eyes?) They underestimate the trouble they're in, underestimate the world's dislike for (them), and underestimate the intelligence of all who readily recognize they're full of bullsh*t.

We have a bigger problem. Wrapping up this useless and expensive war is vital so that we can prepare for an even worse situation....Iran. And this time it will be after pissing off EVERY possible ally, expending treasury down to heavy debt load, discrediting the word and good will of America, and weakening our DEFENSE systems after using them for years as OFFENSIVE systems for no good purpose. (Shame on Congress for giving this authority to such an unwise President....I hope they are a learning organization.)

Pessimism vs optimism? Think again. The REAL contrast is intelligence vs arrogance.

Vote carefully. Your way of life may be at stake.

3 9 06

China's cabinet Thursday criticized the United States over human rights issues citing urban violence, racial discrimination, and abuse/torture of detainees in Iraq. CHINA is criticising the UNITED STATES on matters of HUMAN RIGHTS! Got that? In terms of reflection of current political leadership, if this is not a smoking gun, then no truth is possible. The correct response to this criticism would be, "yes, we have failed in some areas within the complexity of war and difficulty, and we are trying to get our house in order. Thank you for your input and continued cooperation. Instead Prez "Bring-It-On is likely to pick a fight just when we already have fights picked and unfinished with just about everybody. (Of course the pres et al are not the ones actually fighting .....he leaves that to others.)

I plead with you, fellow American voter, to cast a wise vote both in the upcoming mid term elections and the 2008 elections to rid ourselves of these schoolyard bullies, these unwise highly sanctimonious wonks. Whatever your political affiliation, look closely at the man or woman. Recognize our need for maturity and wisdom for leadership at this critical juncture.

3 8 06

Well, there it is. If you pay attention, and my guess is that most don't, Iran has boiled over. Here's the Iranian statement from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has remained defiant: “Our nation has made its decision to fully use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and all have to give in to this decision made by the Iranian nation. We have made our choice.” Translated from today's propaganda guidebook, Iran is making nuclear weapons for immediate use.

With a conservative posture in Iran, a conservative posture in Washington, a weak Europe, a tired U. S. military force, here's where I think we are: prepare for trouble. It might be big trouble. And the American voter has voted into leadership the worst possible leader for the times. He has already mouthed off suggesting we have to "take the fight to them". Now the Iraq fight, not nearly concluded, ties up our gallant but beat-up military forces, has expended billions from our treasury, and the REAL fight may be just on the horizon. By REAL fight, I mean the very reason we fund a DEFENSE department. Our fool prez has expended our resources for his foolish, now known to be unrequired offensive purposes, and as soon as we get hit by this loonytoon Iran dingbat (who by the way is infiltrating Iraq knowing full well he's playing rope-a-dope with the west, we will have no choice but to hit back in a big big way. I would guess we probably will be going it alone again while our "allies" face a camera and whistle patriotic tunes. And from that day, American 'leadership' in the world will be no more. The economic 'leadership', the value of the dollar, our posture in the world will all be in full challenge and question. And YOU Mr. and Mrs. voter did this to America by voting for one, very unwise, very unpolitic, perhaps even crazed, highly self congratulating George W. Bush (and all like minded who surrounds this kind of mentality). For those who have told me directly that they voted Bush because they 'could not stand Kerry', I hope they can stand what they and their families are about to endure. Maybe we can dodge this bullet if Congress awakens, but if not, and if we don't, it ain't gonna be pretty. The only consolation prize is that we may get to watch Iraq smolder in it's death-stinch and charbroiled aftermath. But then, that's been no fun with Iraq, now has it?

One thing the Bush crowd does not seem to understand, perhaps given their dearth of personal military experience......you cannot kick over an ant-hill like Iran and expect the hill to crumble away (did Iraq teach them ANYTHING?). If you are forced to take action, you must poison the hill such that the queen and all supporting soldier ants are certain to die before they know the hill has been kicked. And any militarily savvy and thoughtful person would recognize that Iran knows this about THEIR enemies as well.

2 21 06

It's been a long time coming. There is no comfort in having assessed the human condition correctly along the way. People cling to fairy tale when the truth is just too painful to bear. A vote to a war-prone personality such as W. Bush, along with the war-prone personalities around whom such a person surrounds himself, is a vote for a fairy tale. But eventually we will face our own truths...and what are our current truths: we do not produce our own fuel. We have exported industry. We are about to sell control of our nation's major ports to the people who contributed TWO of the men who attacked and destroyed the NY Trade Towers (allies though they may be in terms of money and oil etc). We are embroiled in containing nuclear directions in Iran (using a reticent Russian proxy) that can lead to (yet more) serious war situations. We cannot find and punish Bin Laden because he has more friends in his area of hiding than we do and we are expending the lives and heroics of our military services in Iraq in a nothing-to-win situation all for little reason beyond politically motivated executive hubris. (What's the deal with this Hussein trial, anyway??) We have a divided and uncompromisable political landscape. We have practiced torture (Americans TORTURING human beings) against those captured in our war making. Our national treasury is spent deep into mind-boggling deficit. Our citizen savings rate is negative. Our borders are allowing a pouring of immigration into our populace that taps social services. (Homeland Security indeed.) We cannot house natural disaster victims. Our political leaders seem completely out of touch. We make expensive decisions because we are indecisive, self-ful and divided. And we have turned mean-spirited, drug-dependent, socially unreliable as we dogmatically and tenaciously cling to a sense of a national (past) greatness. We have another thousand days of the W. Bush administration's dearth of wisdom. We may not be able to weather those thousand days. I continue to hope we can. But I have to also admit that I do not believe in fairy tales.

One more thing, given W has threatened to veto resistance of those who take issue with the turning over of American shipping operations to Islamic nationals....we must ask ourselves a very serious question whatever may be our stripe; is this President not sane? How many times has he told us "we are at war" to make whatever point he might have at hand? Yet somehow he thinks it is OK to turn over port operations to Dubai? What other conclusion besides "insane" can we draw? Even if Dubai is an ally and a trustworthy business partner, how can a president think he may survive by being imperial in the process of breaking his position to us who work all day and must trust these matters to elected authority? Is this President THAT out of it?

2 19 06

More Federal Math: $900 million was spent by FEMA, to buy at top dollar, emergency housing trailers now parked hitch to bumper unused on a tarmac in Arkansas. If you divide 100,000 Katrina victims into $900,000,000, you could give each person nine hundred dollars. You could stand on the bridge just outside the Superdome in New Orleans and pass out hundred dollar bills 'till your arms were tired.....and be money ahead. No need to find a place to actually park trailers. No need to pay trailer storage. No need to pay moving fees. No need to pay the charges for scrapping those trailers that rust in the Arkansas sun. No need to pay lobby fees for trailer sales teams. No need to listen to a bunch of unhappy folks complain that the 'gummint' didn't do anything for them. But then it's hard to make corporate pals in D.C. if you don't toss them a billion now and again.

I find myself asking myself some strange questions during these darkening Bush days. Do you? Will you ask yourself these questions the next time you're offered an opportunity to hang a chad for one of two highly privileged, handpicked wannabe's and their highly privileged handpicked running mates?

2 18 06

OK....so most of us don't like the guy much. OK...so he accidently shot his lawyer/lobbyist/pal in the face. OK...so he kept it a secret perhaps while his blood alcohol leveled out. Let's move on. Far more important that the VICE Prez thinks he has the authority to declassify information that will OUT a clandestine intelligence operator (after using intelligence to whatever convenient devices required in advocating WAR with IRAQ ... for now we'll leave the general intelligence of the Prez out of the equation) and led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and Tens of thousands of middle easterners. A smirking war criminal really. Self assured ex CIO whose ex company (Haliburton) profits way past handsomely in the ongoing spending of billions of taxpayer's money, 120 billion more being requested as I write. Birdshot in the face is NOTHING compared to the thousands dead and billions in treasury lost over some twisted right wing dogmatic dictate. OK Wyoming. NOW you may applaud.

2 11 06

The United States hasn't had a trade surplus since 1975. Last year's imbalance ($725.8 billion deficit) was caused by the sharp rise in imported petroleum products along with textiles, clothing, manufactured goods and food. (Commerce Department report) Even the U.S. farm sector, traditionally a net exporter, recorded a $4 billion deficit last year. About $201.6 billion of the nation's trade deficit was with China , an all-time high for a trade deficit with a single nation ever.

So what does this mean? Basically, other countries produce goods and we buy them in greater amounts than the goods we produce and sell to other countries. Money (not government money per se, but good honest free enterprise cash) exports out in a net outflow of dollars. And what do countries do with those dollars? Some keep the money in dollar form and lend it to our government by buying Federal Treasury Notes etc.. Our government is forced more and more to raise interest rates to keep those lenders happy since if those countries decided to convert to another currency and lend it to someone else, the EEC perhaps, our government would have to try to either tax the U.S. population more heavily, or print and sell bonds (inflate) to get the money they need to study the testicles of the howler monkey, or whatever the hell the U.S. Congress does these days with our money.

So we can probably assume that under the current conditions: a war to pay for.....a contentious and spendtrhift Legistlative Branch.....an unwise and spendthrift Executive branch.... the rates required to keep government fueled with money will continue to rise. A simplistic scenario, I know.

One other point to make. Suppose America was lending money to a nation (strangely even though we run a federal deficit we still just GIVE money away to other nations, I suppose just to be pals) and then the nations to whom we're lending became....uh... obstinate and arrogant in their behavior. What do you think would be our response? Just wondering.

2 8 06

Hmmmm.....now then. The Prez calls out to the world to "stop the violence". Wow. If France had started up with, oh....Bolivia, (after perhaps being attacked by, say, Equador) and went to war for three years with Bolivia....all by itself, the rest of the world just casually involved or working against France. And France could be seen nightly on the tube shooting away at some Bolivian building or another, bodies covered for burial, weeping mothers, angry citizens. And France almost nightly saying the world should call a halt to violence...what would your reaction be? This President three years ago gave Saddam 24 hours to "get out of town". Remember? And before that 24 hours was up, American bunker-buster missiles were slamming into Baghdad? I will always recall those images because WE were attacking a nation that had not attacked US. The Japanese had similar ideas in 1941 as I recall. 'Pre-emptive strike', I think they call it.

No Mr. President. The world is not that dumb. Can you say NUKULAR?

2 4 06

President Spendthrift wants another 120 billion bucks to fight the war in Iraq awhile longer. So...how much is that? If Mr. Taxpayer went to college and has a good job, he earned a hundred grand last year. He paid in federal taxes along the way (the government wants its cut immediately) about $35,000. Dividing 35,000 into 120,000,000,000 we get three million, four hundred and twenty eight thousand five hundred and seventy one and a little. 3,428,571 people who earned a hundred grand and paid federal taxes. A little over half the population of New York City? And for our money we get.....uh.....more war? A beligerant government? WMD's? What??

Man, those hanging chads proved to be awfully expensive, didn't they?

2 1 06

Speech nicely delivered. Great job. However we've heard it all before. Not one new item and most of it sounded a bit empty. The federal house remains deeply divided. So we will see if there's any beef this time. In the meanwhile.....we cannot "honor" the Veteran while we reduce Veteran benefits. We cannot wean ourselves from oil without significant investment in alternative fuel research. We cannot take care of the 78 million baby boomers going onto Social Security in the next decade by turning over the system to the stock market (especially while using part of the proceeds for war-making et al).We cannot employ Americans while we close down or yield entire industries to foreign interests. We cannot put on a tux and applaud our way to prosperity. We cannot employ war as a cavalier alternative to diplomacy. And one person's "negativity" may be another person's pragmatism. The point that Americans can be productive is a good one. However innovation and productivity is not likely when giant business and paid friends of influence have the deck stacked entirely in their favor.

And Mr. President, if you think that arresting a woman who lost her son in your war because you didn't like the writing on her T shirt is going to endear you to regular people, I have to wonder how you see life in general. It doesn't fit any viewpoint in America that I'm familiar with...at least since the firehoses were turned onto Americans by the Nixon administration.

1 29 06

Senator (Assclown) Frist was fried on Meet the Press. Russert skewered the guy. What a bonzo! This guy might prove to be just the ticket for Bush Republicans. No sense of reality. An excuse for everything. Passes the buck on every single important issue. (Not MY job...I'm just a senator.) Never wrong even as the tape rolls showing what an asshat the guy is. The far right should eat him up. I hope they run the guy. The Dems deserve a fair playing field, especially if they go Hillary. It may be her only hope. Then, I can still hope the Dems come out of their coma and run Biden. A good VEEP for Biden might be Barack Obama. But the Dems aren't that smart. Probably will choose a sure loser. After all, why break the trend?

Meanwhile, State of the Union: we are now seven (7) trillion in debt. ($7,000,000,000,000) Bush will ask for a higher cap on debt so he can go higher, probably to 8 trillion. Ford, GM, Delta, Delphi, many others in the tank. (Does anyone besides me notice a trend?) Medicare costing billions but nobody knows how it works. Our hottest industry seems to be methamphetimine labs along with a little border tunnel excavation. Democratic voting taking place in Mid East, and they're all voting basically the same....down with America. Bush doesn't like the outcome of the voting.....get in line W. We have to live with YOU! Don't like the outcome of their vote? Supreme Court not in Palestine to swing it your way? Daddy's pals not able to talk them down? How's it feel? The only feeling worse as far as I can tell is that we have to live two more years of this nightmare with Bush's hand in the national purse. Ah well....at least his pals got a tax break. Happy yachting.

1 23 06

Our Old Friend Popeye the Sailor had just the right word for it.....disgustipatin'. Today down went Ford. Ford joins GM on the way down. Chrysler's already been sold. Now in bankrupcy are Delta, American, Delphi, United, so many others. A race to the bottom. The folks I know playing the stock market are making a fortune.....selling SHORT. Down we go. Totally foreseeable, totally avoidable. Totally the fault of one George W. Bush. At least Hoover let companies go to hell in a handbasket by keeping hands off the handbasket. Bush takes things further and destroys them by putting radical ideas into play, appointing judges who will muster law radically to the right, advancing radical notions of fear (WMD), radical ideas of privacy invasion, radical notions of Presidential power, and spending radical amounts of taxpaper money on war we should not be fighting, taking the federal treasury back down deep deep into the minus territory. Then there's the radical idea of cutting taxes for the rich while we move negatively. All this while overseeing the most corrupt spirit of leadership since Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. Meanwhile we ignore the problems that we are certain to face such as alternative energy. In short....a right wing (and short sighted) radical national direction. Disgustipatin'.

1 21 06

Yes.....I know. I rant on about Bush. But darnit, he just shovels out so much target material. It's like running a rabbit by a dog. Impossible not to give chase. But there is an interesting point to note about presidents in general. They take credit for things they do not do and pass the buck for things for which they are to blame. For example, the Monroe Doctrine was not written by James Monroe but by John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State. However at the time, Monroe was the Prez and not John Q., thus....the "Monroe Doctrine". As for Bush, I will predict that within three years of the inauguration of his replacement, inflation will rise to between six and sixteen percent. Why? Because he spent our federal surplus, borrowed to the brink to pay for war, tax breaks, cheap money for business etc, and there will come a time when the leaders of our economic world will have to print money to bail themselves out of trouble. The alternative for them will be unthinkable and they will have to do it. They will print bonds and sell them, putting the 'extra' money into circulation each dollar of which robbing the value from money already in circulation. Thus...inflation. And the only tool the fed has to fight inflation is.....that's right....interest rates. When they get to around nine percent people will be screaming and economy will be braked seriously. When they pass twelve percent the term "Jimmy Carter years" will be advanced in the news. But inflate they will. And George W. Bush is the reason this will happen. A swaggering, unwise, spendthrift president without idea of economics of the common man, or even of the monetary system. (That's the reason you never hear him or his administration talk about it.) Concurrent tax cuts and wild spending do not work. BUT the poor schmuck who takes office after all the economic damage is about to begin affecting Americans in real terms, will be saddled with the BLAME for that damage. I propose we thus begin now to call this phenomena "THE BUSH DOCTRINE" and place the blame of our coming problems where it belongs. Perhaps we can start a trend of placing blame, and credit, on the responsible administration to which it belongs.

So....to sum up....and with apologies to the late John Belushi who originally said in Animal House, "Don't Cost Nuthin'", the Bush Doctine basically allows a President to do whatever he or she wants as long as it "Don't Cost ME Nuthin'". And the rest of us can just imagine how it must have felt to slip slowly and surely right into the drink on the Titanic, knowing the captain of this particular ship is somewhere on a speedboad in Maine. .

1 19 06

... the per-flight-hour cost of maintaining the helicopters, ... Operating the aircraft for 3000 hours of flight time would cost about $595000, ...

Using the math from that research article snippet above.....a regular helicopter cost $198.33 per hour to run. The presidential helicopter of course has a full compliment of military, runs jet engines, red carpets, communications etc so we can assume it cost a bit more per hour to run. Let's agree on $500 per hour although it probably costs four times that much. Turning our attention to your lately received in the mail IRS form 1040, that means to run that helicopter for a hundred hours, ten taxpayers' total income tax for a year of a modest income of say around $50,000 per year for each of those ten will be required to whisk away a president in a photo opportunity moment from his front yard and to his giant airplane we call Air Force One.....we will ignore what it cost to run a Boeing 747 per hour since you may already be getting the drift here.

This morning G. Bush suggested we ALL have to sacrifice in order to get the federal deficit under control. His Helicopter not withstanding, the war in Iraq costs a billion a week. Black, new, security protected planes, limos, helicopters etc. cost the taxpayer a fortune for this one guy. Every time this guys goes to Texas for "vacation" millions more are spent. Just exactly what is meant by "all of us" have to sacrifice? Does that mean the Bush girls are going to suit up and throw in to the fighting in Iraq? Laura going to give up the Washington Social thing? Or does it mean YOU will be paying more, doing with less? Want to guess?

1 18 06

Tired of it yet? Another American hostage, this one a young girl, to be killed unless we do this, that or the other? Are you getting the gyst of the mentality of these religious freaks? Here's what they understand: "do what we say or we will damn a young American to hell." (Pat Roberson uses a similar line of reasoning, by the way.) So.....what to do? One possible solution is to advance the counter warning that IF this or ANY OTHER hostage is killed, all fourteen thousand Iraqi detainees including the eight women will be killed on the spot and left in a big pile to rot. And then we will go round up another fourteen thousand. When another mad dog religious zealot group carries out such a ridiculous, inhumane and just plain STUPID threat, all of those will be killed on the spot. It is what they understand. Saddam certainly understood it. And of course, this is something we do not normally practice. Thus it cannot happen that way. Instead, we will pussy foot around until Bush is removed and wiser heads prevail, leaving the mideast to steep in its own ignorance for another thousand years....a cesspool of humanity. A shame of shames to humanity. There was a reason why a jerk like Saddam Hussein was in charge of that cesspool....the head turd so to speak. There is right next door in Iran a guy saying what Hitler was saying about the Jews and HE was voted in as the smartest guy in town. The world went to war the first time on such issues. We exploded nuclear weapons over such atrocious behaviors. And now.....a crazy Iranian turd wants his own version of nuclear weapon. It's what these geniuses understand. And until we assimilate into our thinking what they do not understand, we are destined to waste our treasure, waste young lives, and waste our time on this cesspool of human non-mentality.

Solution two is to continue to support Bush who is trying to bring "democracy" to this unflushed sewage. And pigs will fly out of my..........

1 15 06

OK....let's get this whole New Orleans thing straight right now. It can be "chocolate" or any flavor you think you want. But if my house get's knocked down by some tornado or freak of nature, nobody.....especially someone from New Orleans, is going to come pony up for me to rebuild. That's between me and the insurance company I've been paying for such an emergency all during my working life. If you don't like living in a town that exists below sea level and that's going to get wetter and wetter, move to Denver. If you don't like wet, move to Needles. If you want only "chocolate", move to Kenya. But if you don't have insurance and the best you got is to blame FEMA, the Corps of Engineers, or government, or whites, or Catholics or WHATEVER, it's going to get mighty hongry for ya. Folks will grow quite deaf to the whining. Want to rebuild New Orleans? Go for it. Get a shovel and fill 'er in. God loves ya. I only wonder why you aren't there doing it now. But what you REALLY want, at least it seems, is for somebody ELSE to do it. You're willing to move into your new digs and collect some federal money. Right? If so, you're in for some disappointing times. America no longer has that kind of wealth to spare, and FEMA was never meant to be a federal alternative for insurance you never purchased. New Orleans was a port town at the mouth of a great river, and it still is....and will always be unless the Old Man meanders left or right. It does not need liquor or jazz or debauchery or dependent children to serve that purpose. Want to sit on the stoop and sing hymns? Fine....do that then. But don't wait for others to get a hammer and a checkbook to bail you out of a situation that was YOUR choice and responsibility to begin with. Insurance, location, planning, behavior. All your choice. Stop blaming others who live on higher ground. They have other problems....their own problems....their own expenses....their own mistakes to deal with. And don't think for a moment our hearts aren't broken. We hate what we see. But by God, if I had been in that town with an oncoming storm, I'd have found my way out of there. And even after the storms passed there were lines of school buses available when the mayor excused himself and said, "we didn't have drivers for those buses". By God, I would have driven myself out of there, bus full or empty. Sitting on the bridge and waiting for a ten million dollar helicopter to pluck me off a roof and to a Motel would have been no option at all.

Yes...others want to be charitable. Others want to help. Others want to see you not suffer. But don't think for a minute others are blind to certain truths. And one of those truths is the part LUCK plays in life. Some are born with beautiful voices, wonderful faces, into rich families, or with brilliant minds. Some find jobs, work, prepare and live quietly until they die unnoticed. Some NEVER find a decent job. Some are born in a poor Iraqi village. Some choose to live a life which is in the path of a killer storm or tsunami. Some are drafted and sent to war never to see the age of 22. Life ain't fair. And while we do what we can to even things out a bit, Katrina hit New Orleans, and the people who may revive New Orleans to be whatever it will now become....and whatever they decide, New Orleans will be a wet area below sea level.....it will be they who decide, they who do the work, they who pay, and they who maintain it. And luck, good or bad, will determine if the next killer storm comes next year or a little later. And that storm will represent the essence of nature and will not have a flavor preference.

1 15 06

Another economic mention....according to the Fed, inflation last year was 5.4 per cent. That means if you kept your money in your local savings bank, you lost well over 4 percent of its value after being paid going rates for your thrift effort. You would have been better off spending and enjoying. (But wait, according to the savings rate, that's EXACTLY what you did.) And if you bought a Certificate of Deposit and gave permission to your bank to penalize you for lending them your money for less than term, you only lost about 3 percent or so in value. If you gambled on the stock market, you lost only a little if you picked the right ones.

But wait...that's not all. What is inflation? Well, one discussion makes the very real point that inflation is just another tax. Examining that further, if government feels bad that it takes money away from you directly (whatever language is used to do it) then it prints up some bonds, puts more money into circulation and diminishes the value of the money YOU already have and government takes ownership of that value represented by the added currency (basically 'printing new dollars' for themselves) floating around as a result. Makes perfect sense. And the Fed caught onto this during the Carter years and interest rates became the Federal Reserve's device to put a stop to that nonsense. But it seems things are out of sync now, and interest rates are too low to cover inflation, much less the value of the funds you hang onto as a store of your past efforts. So what you had Jan 04 is worth less in terms of exchange value than in Jan 05.

But wait....that's not all! YOU voted these clowns in....AND.....YOU have the authority to vote them out. Of course, we know that you like YOUR guy and want someone else to vote THEIR clown out. So political clown exchange may not be a solution either.

But wait....we have Chavez down in Venezuela (and others). He says he might just turn off the oil spigot to America. That'll teach us for being agressive, obstinate, sneering and swaggering. Yeah....right. Hasn't he ever heard the word "nucular"?

1 13 06

Now there's a prospect for the world to ponder....a nuclear tipped Iran. The Ayatolla types with atomic destruction capability. Praise Allah the way they say or they may decide to vaporize someplace dear to you. While we ponder those attractive options, and before you think to launch into your own religious counterbalance, consider that there is proof now that some types of folks of our day have the troubling proclivity toward knocking down buildings, blowing themselves up, blowing up children etc. Whether the weapon is a grenade packed backpack or a fifty megaton nuclear device is of little distinction. So....what to do? First, Iraq is not the concern and for my money, never was. The American troops will need a rest before taking on the next load of religious crazies (Pat Roberson et al not excepted). Second, Israel cannot take on a nuclear power and "win". There will be no "winners". Third, our leadership does not seem to have an eye on the ball. The whole issue of rising above religious diatribe and seeing the world for what it really is will be paramount in getting into focus. In other words, the ball is (for now) still in the court of the voter. We have to hope we can live through the Bush administration for the next two years knowing it will not likely get hip to the issues of the day. (Rebuilding a destroyed American city below sea level ain't it. Neither is 'democratising' warring Iraqi religious factions.) We have to hope a truly wise world leader surfaces (does not have to be American, but it would be nice) and third we have to hope that enough sane voters get to the polls to install him or her. And all this has to happen before some seal-broken Iranian centrifuge creates enough U238 to install a true crazy into the nuclear club.

So.....as much as we might hope otherwise, we have to consider what life might be like after a domestic detonation. The crazies are now building it, unwise leadership of the current political world is fostering the motives for hatred and division, and a perfect storm of international violent exchange is viewable. No easy answers, however the onus is on the American voter who has not proven wise lately. Have a nice day.

1 10 06

Perhaps it's time for an economics quiz. You have a thousand dollars you want to save. Bank A pays 1 percent. Bank B pays 2 percent, and Bank C pays 3 percent. All are FDIC insured. Which do you choose. Take your time. C? Are you sure? Why?

Great. C was the correct answer. Now.....China sells us more goods than we sell them. We pay them in dollars and they want to save a few trillion of them. The Bank of Sakiyokahamamama pays 1 percent. The Bank of NewYork Empire Liberty Statue pays 2 percent. And the Bank of Euroscandanaviascotlandbritain pays 3 percent. Which do they choose?

C again? Right! Well done. Meanwhile the American "saver" is at a negative 1 percent saving rate of his/her income, which is not admirable, but better than government is doing. The American Political Leader is spending $1.25 for ever dollar he takes in as taxes....AND he (Mr. "Conservative") wants to lower taxes to "stimulate" the economy....ostensibly so we can enhance business and sell China more stuff. AND he wants to carry on a WAR at a billion a week or so to bring freedom and democracy to SandyNuclearclubWMDTowelheadtownwantstokillusville. Meanwhile airlines, automakers, well known large and VERY large firms file for bankruptcy protection. AND about 20 percent of the American workforce is about to go on the government dole and collect Social Security retirement income (from the very same fund used to bomb Bosnia and everyone else...and never paid pack) and this will ultimately rise to about 40 percent of all citizens before falling back a little. AND we've run out of oil, gas, (but plenty of coal), stopped making steel, stopped manufacturing heavy industry goods since WE are so smart we think "information" is the commodity the world wants to buy from us. To be fair.....information AND weapons/protection in combination.

So, to summarize. We're broke and way in debt, we have less that the world wants to buy than the world has to sell us, our main business is destruction, and fewer of us will be on task to do anything about it because our minds are on golf and all-you-can-eat buffet bars in Florida.

End of quiz. Conclusions are extra.

1 3 06

Ahhhh.....a brand new year. And what have we? Concerns over the dollar. Russia holding itself hostage over fuel (A precedent to watch?) while seating itself at the head of the World Economic table (pass the vodka, comrade). Britain already feeling the fuel repurcussions. A little news from China. A new year of death and fighting for the needs of Iraqi people to die and fight without us doing it for them. And if you look carefully you'll see your neighbors merrily buying and driving another new, perhaps slightly smaller family SUV to noplace in general several times this year. It probably has a yellow ribbon sticker on the tailgate indicating support of ..... whatever.....who can remember. So now that the boxes and tinsel are in the landfill for the year, what can we expect? My prediction? Higher fuel prices. Fuel interruptions. Continued deterioration of domestic infrastructure. Businesses failing at an increased rate with some industries moving to Brazil. Stupid statements by a limping, self laming President. Stupid and expensive declarations and laws pouring out of a meaningless and self inclined Congress. Several Supreme Court decisions that will make no sense for anybody, usually decided five to four. Higher local taxes. An ebb and flow of the stock market between 9900 and 11200 (which will be much ballyhooed as "improvement" or even "bullish" once the 11k mark is met). A continued unweaving of the social safety net, and possibly of the social fabric itself for anyone who cannot produce the dollars to stave off their personal financial wolves. And of course, along about July, the news services will begin deploying junior reporters to anyplace and everyplace that lie in the path, or wake, of any potential hurricane. There will be the usual speculation of global warming. The usual windy talk of water temperature. The news will be sponsored in part by the world's largest maker of automobiles. Toyota. Then, mercifully, it will be time to buy more tensil, mostly from WalMart, and to settle back for peace on earth, good will toward men. Oh....which reminds me.....there will be news of Bin Laden. Whether that news will prove good or bad, I wish I could say. I'm not that smart. But I am smart enough to predict that the scandals and other evidences of corruption within areas of leadership in Washington and the buying and selling of influence and favor using TAX DOLLARS as the medium of exchange, will change the dynamics, or at least the perceptions of most Americans, of what America has to this moment become. Then again, maybe I'm more hopeful than smart. We'll update ourselves on the matter at the midterm elections taking from the outcome our answers based on what color we emerge, red or blue, directionally speaking.

Dec 21, 2005

Merry Christmas from the Senate. The news; (Some) Republicans joined Democrats in opposing a bill (the bill passed with a tie breaker vote from Dick Cheney) that would allow states to impose new fees on Medicaid recipients, cut federal child support enforcement funds, impose new work requirements on state welfare programs and squeeze student lenders.

The numbers? Saves 40 billion over five years. This is whilst the administration wants yet another fifty billion to carry on the Iraq war for another month. So there you have the personal cost of bringing "democracy" to Iraq (snickering about the efficacy of that here is appropriate). Your medical safety net, the aid to kids of divorced parents, students who need loans and aid to the unemployed have been reduced. It went to Iraq. Whether the bill makes sense or not, the money is many times over spent to make war.....over WMD....uh....I mean..... ability to reconstitue weapons...uh...I mean...mushroom clouds....uh....I mean to say, democracy for Iraq. Yeah...that's it. Democracy for Iraq. And just like Clinton didn't have sex with that woman, Bush gets court permission as the law requires to tap your phone. I mean....uh...usually. That is...unless we REALLY REALLY need to know stuff. That is, under the ....uh....FISA act. Yeah. That's it. And we don't torture anyone. That is....unless of course we need to. That is...we fly them off to Egypt and outsource the torture...yeah...that's it. WE don't do it. Never have, never will.

Ready to hang another chad for your man?

Dec 20, 2005

You gotta hand it to the guy....the country dislikes the job he's doing 6 to 4. The Dems dislike him in general by a poll count of 11 to 1. Even his own supporters are diving for cover lately. And his method is to attack the press when they ask him a direct question about his behavior? He comes out swinging against.....the voters? He balls his fist and turns angry as he denies the dangers of Presidential "dictatorial" behaviors when asked? He bristles when asked about activities in his administration that are illegal as characterized by distinquished Georgetown law professors? He spends billions, kills thousands, changes justifications from one reason to another to perpetuate war against a non-enemy as if nobody remembers the previous (now proven untrue) justifications? He shows no evidence of pursuit of the REAL enemy. (Recall that he was going to "smoke Bin Laden out", then later said he really didn't think much about Bin Laden anymore?) He purges his staff of anyone not in lockstop (goose step?) with his views? He uses the worst of the information available to him to justify his actions? He has obstinant characters in a now infamous list as his council. (Cheney, Rummy, Delay, Frist, Warner, others). Meanwhile the gas runs lower, the economy rocks back and forth, and the only legal entity that has authority to arrest Presidential illegal behaviors is a recent Hispanic Bush appointee....but they deny croniism ? Wowee.

God help America. Give me the good old days of a BJ in the Whitehouse any day. And whether Bush is impeached or not, the political firestorm is almost guaranteed to play through the next several presidential election cycles.

Ah well, as I've said before, the electorate is getting exactly what they voted for.

Dec 17, 2005

Goodbye Jack Anderson. America needs you more than ever. Hope you rest in peace. Nixon actually tried to have you, an American journalist, killed. Nixon actually ordered his staff to look into killing you..... a newspaper man who tried to keep Nixon in check.

Now we have G. Bush. He sounds like the Jack Nicholson character on the witness stand in the movie A FEW GOOD MEN. "YOU can't HANDLE the TRUTH" he is shouting at the American population, and amazingly even at Congress. He is talking more publicly lately....like some sort of (put some kind of foul sounding party name here) talking down to the underling followship. He has taken the law into his own hands. He has been tapping phones illegally. He has tortured POW's, but his gal, the Sec'y of State, tells the world we do not do that. We did it, but they say we don't? He is trying to bully the Senate for not going along with his WMD/Iraqi-freedom/not-sure-what "Patriot Act" madness. He allows Bin Laden to stay unpursued. We've been here before. Bush is not the king. He represents ONE THIRD of this administration. No more. One third. And it is not even the law making third.

Yes...YOU....you and that faggy voter uniform. Political behaviors outside the law makes your vote meaningless. Rest well, Jack Anderson. We will miss you.

Dec 16, 2005

It took an act of Congress....driven through by the tenacity of an influencial middle-of-the-road senator.....to get this administration to agree NOT to TORTURE people. And the Bush administration as it turns out gives itself permission to tap your phone without legal permission. And the Pentagon is conducting activity to spy on Quakers who do not support war for ANY reason. So with nearly fifty thousand human beings DEAD over a war that will have NO SPOILS for Americans but rather foment further conflict for as long as we can see into the future, how do you like your man now Mr. and Mrs. voter?

I have a mental image of this prez counting hanging chads in Tikrit. After all....can't have the WRONG party winning an election.

Dec 7, 2005 (a day that will live in infamy)

OK....on another note and in keeping with the day, here's the RIGHT direction. Forget Iraq. Muster the forces we have left and bring Osama Bin Laden in by his 'nads and bring him in alive if possible. (Now HIS would be a trial worth watching). The communication of this event would finally be in line with the sentiments of most Americans who mostly want to convey the idea; "Attack us, pay the price". A leader should repeat that over and over to himself each night before bedtime. After a fair trial of Osama and merry execution of sentence, begin a withdrawal of American forces from the world. We DEFEND. We do not OFFEND. That's why our founders decided to call it the "Department of Defense". Or at least that's the way it's supposed to feel.

Then....get the economy in order. Stop borrowing. Make the way of things friendly to production and creativity. Open the creative gates for product creation, energy, housing, social safety netting etc. How? With leadership. Active and skillful use of the bully pulpit. The people will exalt you. Reward your friends if you must, but keep in mind that the citizen most down on his luck is as much a member of the American culture as, say, Dick Cheney. And speaking of insult, stop the corruption among leaders. Get the voting system on an even keel and practice what you preach. Pack the courts at your peril. And for God's sake, learn the correct pronunciation of the word "nuclear".

December 3, 2005

And this quality of stubbornness of a president who deems himself "always right"....a guy who attacks/chastises anyone who stands in dissent or even with mild criticism, will go into obscurity known for embroiling and perhaps even impoverishing America over a losing and foolish cause. Victory? Meaning a Wal-Mart on every Baghdad corner? An erection of a G. Bush statue on the court square? With Bin Laden still at large? With annual attacks on our homeland by crazed Muslims inflamed by Cowboy Bush's foolish reactions? Victory?   Even the commonest of common sense understands that whether we leave Iraq today or twenty trillion dollars from today, that culture will collapse into civil war and settle eventually into three distinct cultures if not three different nations. So this foolish foolish president hinges his historical byline on his losing cause ....a foolish war that he himself started? On a WMD lie?   So be it.

addendum (or EXTRA as they used to call it before national news was a Republican shoe-shine boy)

Reading below it would appear that war is not an option. Not true. Sometimes war is the only option. Otherwise it would surely not exist. BUT....the Iraqi nation had nothing to do with 911. Our buildings were knocked down by mostly Saudi individuals of Islamic pursuasion. They were knocked down over a few crazed religious types intent to "teach us a lesson" (and how is this different from Pat Robertson of late?). And no matter what, we would be "infidels". So to the question of war; who do we go kill? Saudis? Islamic people? Middle eastern morons with hairy asses? The guys who did the deed are dead in the process. So our "leadership" went after Saddam. Not a nice guy, this Saddam. But who cares? He lops off his own head when he kills his own people. Not our concern. But lo....our Prez who cannot pronounce the word "nuclear" decided his dearth of testosterone would show if he did not send our guys to go kill somebody else's guys.....otherwise it would appear as inaction against the enemy. Who was already dead. Who was Saudi or Kuwaiti. Not Iraqi. And how could he put on coveralls and land on a carrier to declare "Mission Accomplished" if he didn't do SOMETHING? So here we are. At "war" Viet Nam style. No plan. No stated end game. Just another meat grinder for the ego of a daddy's boy foisted on us by daddy's pals when the so called Supreme Court decided the 2000 election.

Just wanted the whole record straight on this "war" thing.

November 25, 2005

''People are putting their lives on the line in Iraq and we in Congress have to deal rationally with this issue,'' Foley said. ``Murtha should be applauded, not derided, for having the guts to speak his mind.''

There we have it. The almost unheard and certainly most ignored voice of reason. The Dems and 'Pubs are in a death grip for control. The 'Pubs want control of everything.....total control money, business, economy, Chinese behavior, your thoughts, NBC nightly news scripts. The Dems would settle for any seat at the table. So the rancor, while unfortunate, is not temporary. When the Dems are seated at the head table (of course it will happen) none of this will be forgotten. The 'Pubs will be lucky to get even a crumb of a scrap of month old bread. They'll get their holier than thou teeth kicked in regularly and the Dems will go too far being Dems. And alternatively....etc. So much for the Amercian experiment of Democracy. But wait. There may be hope. Yes...the people and the collective wisdom of their vote.........

OH. Sorry. The last two elections proved that there is no hope there.

November 18, 2005

Let's see now....John kerry, Riverboat captain, U. S. Senator, coward. Colin Powell, Secretary of State, general and veteran of foreign war....coward. Michael Moore, collector of information and film producer, coward. John Murtha, Congressman, Colonel U.S. Marines, Veteran Viet Nam, coward. And anyone else including YOU who may have any other opinion than the bullies in charge of the executive branch....cowards.

On the other hand, Dick Cheney, infirm, CEO, excused from war, or any kind of military service.....dismisses the above as coward. G. W. Bush, purveyor of bad ideas, ex drunk and shirker of personal duty while in National Guard at time the rest of us served in Viet Nam era, and also something of a smirking mommy's boy, dismisses the above as coward.

Have we finally made the complete cycle? Is up down, left right, bottom top, in out?

Since those in the executive branch seem to have such towering debate skills, why don't we insist they prove their personal bravery by deploying every single relative they have under the age of fifty to the war zone as combat operatives till this IRAQ thing is finished. They could maybe stay on the hunt for WMD? Or perhaps bring 'democracy' to an area of tribal history engaged in petty conflict and hatred ten times longer than America herself has existed? That way we can be assured by example that they certainly aren't afraid to sacrifice....at least others in their family. But then, that's not how bullies work, is it? Instead, they stand in the schoolyard and shout COWARD at the regular, normally quiet people who do the real work....who make the unsung sacrifices for God and Country. Let me see....can I think of word that describes such bully-like behavior?

Don't agree with me? Want to step over here and say that?

November 17, 2005

There's our man in China. He's telling the Chinese how to live. When hubris is enough to make the hair stand up on the America political neck, it makes the Chinese absolutely crazed. But does that stop our man? Never mind the Chinese now produce most of the everyday products we use today in America. And never mind the Chinese lend America enough money to allow this administration to live deeply in debt in the face of American (non)savings statistics. Never mind the Chinese keep rogue Asian nations at bay by its size and economic authority. Our man's there now....setting them straight. He has the hurricane victims under control now....or at least off the front page. He has the courts conservatively stacked. He has Iraq right where it wants him. And he's adequately created the most caustic and polarized environment in American politics in memory. So off to China to set those guys straight too.

Only one word adequately describes this president's Asian visit at this particular time. Embarrassing.

Nov 10, 2005

Change of pace on Veterans Day.....a word to marketers in the glare of bankrupcy and pressures of market competition. In the seventies execs of GM and Ford decided to extract just a bit more profit from dedicated brand name buyers by producing merchandise that was of poor quality. You may remember the Vega, the Pinto, others. I, as so many other buyers dedicated to American branded goods, went for it. Fifty thousand painful miles later I was a dedicated Toyota buyer. Still am. Toyota (or any other Japanese brand) will have to screw me over to change my brand allegiance. GM can go to hell. The lesson here is if an American manufacture or service provider (do you hear me Delta?) puts out a product so bad as to drive me away from the brand, you'll have one awful time getting me back.....and probably never will. Spend millions of dollars for advertising screaming at me. I don't hear it. I suspect I represent millions with like mindset. This concept goes for politics as well. Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me. (do you hear me Senator?).

Nov 7, 2005

The whole point to this blog is raw truth. Even if it stings. I have to confess, I could write all day and not tell the truth as succinctly as Anna Quindlen in the October 31 issue of Newsweek article titled We've Been Here Before. I would point you to a site to read it, but they want money etc. So here is the last line of the article: "America's sons and daughters are dying to protect the egos of those whose own children are safe at home. Again."

And of course by "again" she means Viet Nam.....lessons not learned, advice not heeded. The ONE guy, Colin Powell, who knew something about the cost of stirring up a hornet's nest, the one guy who had actually BEEN in combat and was aware of the consequences for such violent action, was drummed out of the ole boy club. Now we are left with a mess of a war. An inconcludable set of political circumstances at a cost of two billion a week, a cost of 2035 lives so far. A swaggering daddy's boy (who YOU probably voted for) in the White House who can't leave town and not have populations of people set things on fire in protest of him and what he represents.

So.... jeopardy question for you......have you seen the truth about national leadership yet?

Nov 5, 2005

I recall back in the fifties reading the Houston Chronicle funny pages.....a favorite was the Al Capp cast of characters in Lil Abner. Some of the women were so perfect, even I as a very young lad appreciated their charms. And the men had such glaring defects.....and the one with the biggest of all, and maybe you're old enough to remember, was Joe Btfsplk. Joe was the world's worst jinx (well, in the world of Dogpatch) who always walked with dark clouds over his head. Even asleep this guy just brought bad news to anyone he was around. Bad luck and bad news followed him and he lived the life that created bad news as he went along. And so it seems does George Bush take his dark cloud with him as he represents the whole of America with his brand of speak. If it were anyone else but him (well..... and maybe Nixon) he would take the hint that his very presence inspires masses to break windows, revolt, throw gasoline cocktails, endanger themselves in protest to his very thinking. But he staunchly proceeds, knowing of his rightness. No deviation. Keep the arm of America in the fire....burn as it may. It just HAS to stop hurting soon.

So Prez Btfsplk.....keep that same speed, same track, same pace, same direction, same ideas and try to keep hope that somehow you will end up in a different place. And never mind that the WHOLE DAMNED WORLD is watching (and in some cases violently protesting America's very existence) your not so funny and rarely intelligent notions play out (and history will tell if illegal).

Nov 3, 2005

From the Herald Tribune; "The U.S. central bank's decision to raise interest rates, citing the threat of inflation, means it is almost certain to raise rates again in December and January and will probably continue to raise them after Alan Greenspan retires as chairman at the end of January.  In effect, Greenspan's last act as chairman of the Federal Reserve amounts to a carefully choreographed effort to shore up the Fed's credibility and gently reverse an extraordinary period of cheap borrowing."

Read another way, through the entire Bush administration the economy's health has been carried on the back of the saver, the thrifty, the retiree living on past earnings, lending their past earnings to businesses who pay their CEO's exhorbitant salaries to stay afloat and lowering the living standard of those who chose to keep faith in thrift. Is there wonder why the American savings rate has turned negative? Why would anyone save money that earns one percent per year that loses three to five percent to inflation? Any wonder why real estate, most often acquired by borrowing, has acquired a "bubble"?

If Bush ran for a third term he would have to run on the motto, "I just don't get it....and I never will".

Nov 1, 2005

Twenty four hours makes quite a difference. The colliseum is being swept for the blood letting. I hear the rumblings of the Democratic party sprouting gonads. There will be a fight....a fight that perhaps can only be won by fillibuster. Finally, a standoff at high noon over the direction of the country....a standoff between the rights of citizens to be private citizens, and the right of the right to be right with the right wing telling everyone else how they better worship, live, think, pay taxes, abort, etc etc etc. So at this stage all we can do is wait for the show, wait to see if the gonads newly sprouted are enough to get past the obstinate idiocy of the Republican Taliban that has brought us here....and brought us here with the usual national rancor instigated by the poorest stewardship in memory....all thanks to the most unwise George Bush and his hard shelled and totally out of touch VP. Let loose the lions.

Oct 31. 2005

Alito? OK. Shy guy. Quiet. Conservative. He will likely, after much ado and bellyaching ballyhoo become O'Conner's replacement. O'Conner was a moderate. 'middle of the road' advocate of common sense and wisdom. Dare we suggest "fair thinking". Thoughtful. Alito will impose on us the hashed and guilt bound/restrained musings of the right wing. Hopefully not the FAR right. And even more hopefully, he will respect the concepts of stare decisis. But the right wing nonetheless. So it will be until some crazy decides maybe the immediate answer, since these are PERMANANT appointments, might be to take it upon himself or herself to make a permanant adjustment on his own. Such after all seems the direction of the post middle east, post "flipflop" world.....if you don't agree with something, assissinate the official....or at least find some riverboat boys who will assassinate his character.

And speaking of the Iraqi debacle, when can we hope for an end to the hemorrhage of American assetts to that part of the planet? Is it plain yet to CONSERVATIVES that this is good money for bad? A no return investment? A civil war will in all likelihood take over these people on American departure for decades if not forever. We usually don't much care, meaning the transgressor has no oil.....recall Idi Amin Dada.....Amin rounded up the military leaders that did not support his coup, murdered them, decapitated them and sat their disembodied heads around the presidential dining table, scolding them for not supporting him, and taking bites http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/dictators/idi-amin-dada/ of their flesh. This guy makes Saddam Hussein look like Jeb Bush. Alas....Uganda had no oil. Nothing we Americans needed to get to Walmart to fetch this week's bargain item from China. So we sent no liberating forces, we budgeted no time to prove WMD, Yellowcake, no 911 link. Why then Iraq? Normally, don't we blithely pass some sort of judgement suggesting a lower level of humanity should be allowed to go ahead and self destruct. It's their internal business.

So then....to our internal business..... Welcome Mr. Alito. Hope you're wise. If not, we hope you can become so, and in the doing find the 'middle of the road'. With any luck, perhaps one day you may be able to help "elect" a president.

Oct 20, 2005

Saddam Hussein....bellecose, defiant, standing before the court indicted for crimes and improper conduct against the very people over whom he held representation. Taking for himself and his cronies the spoils of power and leaving to the people a penumbra of political fear, including fear of leadership's reprisal against them if they dared speak in opposition. Standing there as if something besides a common criminal.

Tom Delay....bellecose, defiant, standing before the court indicted for crimes and improper conduct against the very people over whom he held representation. Taking for himself and his cronies the spoils of power and leaving to the people a penumbra of political fear, including fear of leadership's reprisal against them if they dared speak in opposition. Standing there as if something besides a common criminal.

Oct 19, 2005

What's this we hear? A so very slight drumbeat of honest communication breaking through the din of noise we accept as our fate and news? A proposal to simplify and make fair the federal tax system such that even local systems will have to adjust to simple and fair? A proposal to plug our borders in a way as to stem the tide of millions of illegals who appear to absorb what little cream there is in terms of social services? GM and UAW working together to lower production costs, finding a sellable product mix and FINALLY attempting to compete with Japanese brands? A suggestion that if the folks who man the pumps had not abandoned those pumps during Katrina they would have prevented New Orleans from flooding? A murmor of the right suggesting they don't like the way Supreme Court justices are enthroned? A proposal to raise gas prices to European levels using the difference to create American transport infrastructure and alternative fuels? Can all this be possible? Did a Democrat take office while I slept last night? Or was the news day so slow, devoid of severed heads, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, weapons of mass destruction, and CIA leaks that we were for the moment read to from page seven?

Oct 12, 2005

Here's a thought. Suppose you were a high minded official of American policy. You had promised to lower taxes for the wealthy and make it permanant, and you had basically assured the opposing polital types that the shortfall would not fall on the backs of the masses of working stiffs. Then you start a war at a billion a week. And a hurricane blows through. Then another. Throw in various western fires along with a general need to get your numbers up. How do you pay for this? Do you raise taxes? Well....of course you have to, but do you call it a tax? Not on your life. So.....think about it....what element of your life has gotten doubly expensive lately? Think hard about that as you fill your SUV up with gas. Keep in mind that you're funding not only our side of the war, but the other side as well. Thought of it yet? Keep pumping that gas as you consider the question. When you take the receipt and put it in your polyester pocket, consider what fertilizes your food, heats your house, makes your plastics, produces your medicines. Thought of it yet?

Clever not to call it a "tax", don't you think?

Oct 8, 2005

Uh oh. A report out amongst all the indictments and power-based corruption suggests that the Prez has said out loud that he is on a "mission from God". God made him do it. Frightningly, and in more eloquent use of language, seems we hear this same logic from the Bin Laden types. Allah makes them do it. This is big big trouble. Scary stuff. This is the kind of talk that makes crazy people do crazy things that kill millions of innocent bystanders. No kidding. Nukes laying around, angry talk justified by religious sentiments on all sides, military poised to do exactly what it is told by these fruitcakes, nobody making any sense. It's enough to want to put a sticker on the bumper of the car and drive around saying, "don't blame me, I voted for Charles Manson". But alas....who can afford to drive around these days.

Oct 6, 2005

Tonight, if you pay attention to such things....Prez Photo-Op is going to give us a speach. Here is what to expect: "No new taxes. Stay the course. We can't withdraw troops. Things are progressing." In other words, nothing new. He's done this several times. And all he does is inspire two major assumptions about his administration.....he's filled with himself...and he thinks the citizenry is stupid. And my guess is that he will have an increasingly hard time pre-empting a re-re-rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond because the folks who control such things KNOW that the content of his communication is empty. More of the same. Another Photo-Op. Same message, same delivery, same "I'm right and my detractors are partisan" song that we've grown so very very tired of, especially given the mess the Prez and his cronies have created for others to clean up later.

Hope I'm wrong. But if you think that this Prez is going to deliver a message of withdrawal from Iraq, intensity of effort against Al Quaida inspired terrorism (a real problem), a suggestion, no matter how ill thought, as to how to move out of current energy problems, health scare problems, corruption at high level problems, etc, then he will prove to me that the second inspired assumption may be well grounded.

Oct 5, 2005

I have been accused of negativity. Laughing positively, I recount this morning's news. GM is selling off the corporate pieces at fifty cents on the dollar. Delphi, a major GM supplier, is likely to file for bankrupcy. Delta Airlines, my beloved local jewel, filed bankrupcy a week ago. Five more service guys died in Iraq. Pest controller turned partisan legislator Tom Delay (ostensibly an advisor to what was at one time the most powerful office in the world currently held by a less than stellar performer) angrily declares his innocence of campaign MONEY abuses for purposes of illegally funding certain legislative bodies, whiningly accusing the other side of partisanship. New Orleans has fired three thousand workers. Dow Jones lost another hundred points and has moved between 10100 and 10900 over the entire Bush adminstration's tenure. European markets headed south. Asian markets down. Natural gas will be double what it cost me last year. The local gas stations have been out of gasoline four of the last five times I have tried to buy.....at three dollars a gallon. Inflation is at 3.5 percent but the local banks offer me 2 percent or less for "thrift" savings. The county proposes higher property taxes to keep school buses running. Real estate speculation continues on the back of cheap mortgage funds (see inflation). Meth labs, flu and bird flu arise as some of several possible potential national epidemics. And it appears we will have a lady on the supreme court deciding our individual rights based on no judicial exerience at all.....with an assurance by Prez. Photo-op that she "won't change in twenty years". The best hope is that radical right types don't like her because she's not a sure bet to their immediate agenda to tell the rest of us how we must live.

What on earth could be my problem? Life is one cherry red picnic bowl of positivity. Smiley faces.

Oct 3, 2005

The Newsweek article this week concering Delay, Bush and the Rebulicans in general says something like, "Oh my goodness look....gas prices are high, the war in Iraq is going badly and we may lose it, Al Quaida grows in ideological influence against western thinking, Bin Laden is still loose, our numbers are down because people now hate us (and we wouldn't normally care except it makes the numbers go down), and we have a debt so big we may never get control of the borrowing before we can get out of office and enjoy a rich retirement where we don't have to care anymore." And now we have our main Schoolyard Legislative Bully under indictment for illegal partisan activity and he blames "partisanship" for his problem. Well, basically it says all that in more journalistic jargon. The big question to me is, why wasn't all this evident when the last election was taking place? Where are all those dinks waving a flip flop in the air and badmouthing people who basically were telling all who would listen (key word here is "listen") the above was inevitable? Of course the answers to these kinds of questions are as varied as there are opinions of the situation. Ask enough people and eventually one will tell you that the sun rises in the north. The bad news is, we have a hell of a mess on our hands any way we try to face it, and we don't have the leadership to begin the work necessary to rectify all the damage that's been done by BAD EXECUTIVE STEWARDSHIP. So....fly that AF one plane around some more, Prez Photo-op. Maybe you can raise your numbers a couple more points....all the way up to 42. But history is already written on this administration. It's just a matter now of the flip flop waving crowd to.....well.....flip flop.

Sept 30, 2005

I was talking with my friend about some basic economic concepts we studied long ago. One term of economics was elasticity. The concept is that no matter how high the price of a particular commodity goes people will buy the same basic amount of it because they must. The demand does not move commensurately with price. Food and fuel both are examples. You must admit that you will buy both at any price at some point. It seems we have plenty of crude, but our ability to satisfy our collective proclivity to burn up the refined products, however trivially we do so (think of a bunch of teens driving cars with intentionally ruined mufflers around the local hangout, tattooed arms hanging out the car window chanting the current version of, "ooh baby ooh baby" or any other example of fuel waste that pleases you). The bigger story is.....we will eventually run out of fossil fuel altogether. You have seen lately the news mongers' pictures of people breaking into fights just waiting in line to get fuel. Imagine the scenes when there's not enough food, much less a way to "ooh baby".

Real political leadership would wisely be making plans for this inevitable transition born of our national reality. It won't be this administration. Key words here are "real" and "wisely".

Sept 29, 2005

Well now, Congressman. You seem to be squealing like a Texas pig under a gate that you built yourself. Not meaning any disrespect, but how else will the electorate convey to Congress that a bill that ends with, "and this law shall apply forcefully to each every citizen....except of course with the usual implication that excuses ME and my cronies, pals and their sweetheart contributors". Nope. Rosty didn't get it....so off to jail he went, squealing as I recall like an Illinois sow. But of course his lesson was not heard by all (evidently). So now, perhaps your new bunky in Texas prison, a guy affectionaly nicknamed Big Bill Bottomficker, might be able to convince you that we are not interested in hearing how innocent you think you are. You seemed to have a taste for the policital blood of others. How long did you think that would go on? Hardball? You like hardball, don't you Congressman? Fine. But the squealing is just not very attractive, sir, when the ball hits YOU in your not so manly manparts.

Sept 28, 2005

Regarding Tom "I Am Not A Crook" Delay, does he strike you as arrogantly as he does me? I was born in Texas but have to admit a certain embarrassment to admit it. Has winning at any cost moved as far as down to the dog-catcher level? How bad does this have to smell before we start to wonder if even the Nixon era was not enough to awaken us from our national political coma?

John Kerry, anyone?

Sept 26, 2005

OK...think about it just a moment. We sent her son to fight in Iraq ostensibly for our freedoms to speak, to bear arms, to gather peacefully, to report the truth etc. Her son died in combat. She protested. We arrested her for protesting without a license. Can anyone say, "Kent State"? How did that song go? How many dead in O-HI-O? Is our memory that short? Or are we cowards? Something's bad wrong here.

Meanwhile, our Prez is asking the nation to drive less to conserve fuel. We wasted five years now doing nothing to attend to alternative fuels, taxes on fossil fuels to buy time (see my rants below) etc. and President Photo-op flew his 747 (equipped with gas tanks the size of a four car garage) emptying that baby as he takes to his Marine chopper (not sure how big THOSE tanks are) to attend to compassionate hurricane matters while he tries to regain his political footing. Something's bad wrong here.

Sept 23, 2005

The news is dribbling out....but just dribbling mind you....certain hints of national common sense. Dare we hope...awakening? Seems more and more people are seeing the arrogance and the waste associated with Iraq. This morning a Houston Chronicle writer pleaded for the Fed to reconsider rises in interest rates. Easy to be compassionate when somebody else (in this case the thrifty) has to pony up. Those days of cheap, easy money are over for awhile. Can't pay interest to savers at less than the rate of inflation....the savers (i.e. the Chinese) will go elsewhere and take their money with them. And make little mistake about it....we will be big big borrowers for some time to come. Some folks will have grandchildren unable to reach balance. And while on the issue of temporary, note that the infrastructure of America is not permanant. Houses are made of wood in America, generally speaking. They rot in thirty years. Or blow down in five. (recall the little piggy story?). In Europe where stone was employed, generations of families need only re-roof every century or so and they're good to go. We should consider fixing ourselves before trying to fix....say.....Iraq. Mind you, if a political group attacks us, no mercy. They die. Their children die. We're very good at killing children. Otherwise, high time we had leadership that saw a larger picture domestically speaking. That surely does not include President photo-op. Here's hoping.

Sept 22, 2005

A new and beautiful day. Let's see where we are; Hurricane of cat five strength heading for Galveston which never fully recovered from the devastation of the hit it took in 1900. New Orleans to cost $200 billion (which in government money is a trillion) to patch, not fix. Pork barrel projects to be paid for by federal borrowing from the Chinese. Tax cuts for the rich unalterable and more are being debated for Congressional passage. Greenspan with no choice but to ratchet up fed rate which currently does not cover inflation rate (if you save at that rate, you lose). Current deficit $377 billion before war and storm(s) expenses. Stock market is where it was in 1999 and heading south a hundred points a day. And thirty nine percent of us thinks G. Bush is doing a fine job.

I don't usually give financial advice, but I'm thinking if you are hanging onto stocks, I tip my hat to your courage. The gov is going to have to pony up some serious interest payments to keep the borrow-monster fed.....and with the savings rate in America now at ZERO, I'm thinking a lot of folks are on the wrong side of that issue. Perhaps the Repubs will field another guy next election cycle adroit at telling the voters anything but the harsh truth? Now THAT's a candidate with a strong chance of winning. Is this a great country? Well. ...but it USED to be.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46440

Sept 21, 2005

Dead American service men in Iraq is over nineteen hundred now. Nineteen.....HUNDRED. I know. So what. They volunteered. More important we have gas for the SUV so we can run back and forth by the millions....SUV's nuts-to-butts....running from the hurricanes, traffic deadlocked for miles, engines idling, air conditioners blowing, then go back home to complain that somebody ELSE should insure our lives. Somebody ELSE pays. Somebody else dies. We borrow the huge deficits from somebody ELSE. Who cares. All we care about is.....gas up, get some dinner, put it on the card, drive somewhere in the SUV. Who cares who's dead and for what these days. More important things to think about.

Sep 18, 2005

So let's recap; Delta pensioners are to go unpaid. Gold is at $461. Oil is at $63 (and Venezuela predicts $100 soon). Inflation is appearing as THE major topic at the Fed again as Bush tells us we will spend unknown billion$ to build a town with the nickname of "Big Easy". And the Iraq war costs a $billion a week as it becomes clear we have won nothing in terms of "the war on terrorists". I suppose we had better take the moment to remind ourselves what inflation is.....too much money chasing too few goods. Money sloshing around, but limited goods to buy. So prices get bid up. More brown spots on the lettuce, but a higher price per head. What's that say about your future beyond just higher interest rates? Did Bush look after your personal well being during his watch (we might as well look at the Bush administration in the past tense since it will not change in temper or economic wisdom from now to the next election cycle). The answer? The very worst administration ever in terms of domestic economics. EVER. Including Hoover except that Hoover did not have the safeguards emplaced by FDR to counterbalance his really bad conservative tendencies during a time of general downturn. At least we have that to negate Bush to some degree. So...the wise of today will buy gold, prepare for war, perhaps even for depression, sell the SUV, stock up with canned goods (a futile but psychogically comforting exercize), perhaps buy a family gun, and start thinking about who may have the wisdom to get us out of the mess we seem to be entering. I personally am hopeful when I ponder Joe Biden. But then he makes too much sense and tells the raw truth too often to have much chance with the fickle and unwise American electorate. I can still hope.

Sep 17, 2005

OH MY....There was a scene from New Orleans of beached sailboats. Yachts actually. The kind of boats that make you gasp in wonder as to who can afford to DOCK those things, much less BUY them. Quarter million dollar sailing vessels, half million dollar yachts, laying beached on their sides. And the story? How will federal money be spent in getting people back to "normal". Now...knowing what we know about WHO gets WHAT under the "Bush" administration (you ARE aware of who got the tax cuts, are you not?) do you think the poor guy with the beached yacht will get the federal money to get back to "normal", or do you think the black lady with a baby on each hip with tattoos and diction that can be barely understood gets the ....uh...."federal assistance". Take your time. No hurry to answer.

Sep 16, 2005

How to be both a bleeding heart liberal AND a niggardly self possessed conservative.

"As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality," Bush said, before getting back on his personal 747 paid for by U.S. Taxpayers, whisking him to his private Presidential helicopter, taking him to a feast of steak and lobster with all the trimmings prepared for him by the Whitehouse chef and served by Whitehouse personnel.

Some members of the U.S. Congress say (New Orleans) could cost $200 billion, and nobody at the White House was denying the figure, which would exceed the costs of the Iraq war.

"There's no question that the recovery will be paid for by the federal taxpayer and it will add to the deficit," said White House economic adviser Allan Hubbard. At the same time, he said, Bush wants to extend tax cuts but which Democrats would like to end because of the impact on the budget deficit.

Sept 15, 2005

Question for you; if a tornado came through YOUR town and blew down YOUR house, who pays? Did you have tornado insurance? No? Did you set aside disaster funds since you KNEW that you lived in a place where storms tend to form? No? So doesn't the burden to rebuild your home, as bad as the luck may be, fall on YOU? How is this different from New Orleans? The Prez stands there and says HE assumes responsibility, but somehow I have the uneasy feeling that the very next time I buy groceries, or gas, or HOMEOWNER'S insurance, I will be contributing to the rebuilding New Orleans. Not only next time, but henceforth and forevermore.....tacked onto the debt of rebuilding Iraq. How is it that the Prez can assume responsibility but everybody else pays? How is THAT "accepting" responsibility?

With all that in mind, and with Mr. Bush's "business sense" well documented (recall Fahrenheit 911?), I would suggest here that Mr. Greenspan has chosen an EXCELLENT time to depart the field. I smell double doses of inflation on the intermediate and long term horizon. And I further would prognosticate that the legislative branch of government will go along with most bad ideas surrounding New Orleans with almost no forethought and an equal amount of hindsight, and of course they will complain about bad economic decisions later....perhaps during a vote to raise their own pay.

Oh...one other VERY important note: I am fond of suggesting that people are liberal until they have something to conserve. Trent Lott, bless his heart, said today that we are conservative until we want somebody else to pay our way. Well....that's what he said in terms of THIS particular catastrophe in behalf of HIS people. But trust me....as soon as those folks have something to conserve, they'll go right back to Blue State.

Sep 12, 2005

Ready to be frightened? I'm not talking about just a little head spinning, pea soup spitting, devil-in-your-stomach scared. Not just boogey-man under the sheets monstor-in-the-closet stuff. I'm talking the ultimate frightened out of your wits. So afraid you can't function. So disturbed that life is no longer the life you knew but a nightmarish hell of day to day struggle just to get the next breath of life, and wishing you didn't have to? A pining for the good old days fantasy down at the mill stream just to escape for a few seconds the realities of being perpetually afraid? READY? OK then...check out this morning's news headline;

PRESIDENT of the United States would be able to launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes against enemies planning to use weapons of mass destruction under a revised “nuclear operations” doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks.

Sep 8, 2005

I've considered lately the drubbing America has taken and the criticism others, particularly the hyper-criticism such as from the Taliban/Muslim types and I've wondered what we've become. The storm offered some interesting indicators. It seemed at the top of social calamity, the most important thing for some is to break into unattended shops and steal designer clothes. It seems, even though at war and under the self proclaimed command of the most bumbling leadership in memory, the emails that I receive seem to suggest that the most important issues are my penis size and whether or not I own a fake Rolex. I could easily imagine during nuclear attack being approached by some huckster, face-blistered with radiation poisoning advising me to pay no attention to the mushroom cloud but rather buy his Alstate insurance policy NOW. I suppose the lesson is....life goes on. And if life has been unkind it makes some sense, although not admirable or moral, to expect that life will continue to be unkind and one had better do what one can while the getting is good. And this very line, it seems to me, is the line between conservative and liberal. Social order, not economics, not politics, not possessions, is the one thing that keeps us from going totally out of control. Order keeps the goods flowing, It keeps the store of past effort (money) worth something. Without it, we're lost. And social order cannot be forced. It has to be voluntary. There has to be something in it for the participants. (I think that's why we call democracy an "experiment"). If the order of the day is tax cuts for the privileged and sardines and crackers for the unprivileged (if they behave themselves) then 'order' is in danger. Just as the public works (regretibly forseeable) cuts that kept American infrastructure unrepaired.... not just New Orleans.... turned into the death of America's 25th largest city, so will that kind of thinking bring America herself into a non-competitive stature on the world stage. So...."conserve" at your own peril, Mr. and Ms. American voter. The pens of history are scribbling furiously.....and Bush's privileged mommy probably ain't gonna like what they write.

Sep 7, 2005

My friend Craig and I were talking about change. Odd the way change creeps in. Not long ago the now out-of-business Rite-Buys grocery just down the street from me WAS a Winn Dixie, which before was in a building across the street, which now is a Turkish market and ethnic community store. And just last labor day weekend I decided to take a little drive and went to the corner where there are three stations from which I usually buy gasoline. All three were out. No gas. No inventory. Closed. It made me consider that perhaps we are now in a situation where we may no longer drive beyond the halfway point....point of no return fuel-wise....no going on without some sort of confirmation that fuel is available at the next fuel stop. Perhaps whole industries will spring up just communicating this vital information to SUV hangers-on. God knows we used to run our cars out of gas back when gas was plentiful and relatively cheap. So faced with the potential that we may have to STAGE a trip based on fuel availability, perhaps it's time to think in terms of public transport. Or maybe something out of the box. Maybe "hook-on" cars. Those irritating big trucks are (maybe) going to haul freight anyway. So why not hitch drone cars onto them. Those trucks replaced the trains. So why not make trains out of the trucks?

However it goes, we have to get used to the fact that change is not only likely, but is happening now right before the eyes of those with the vision to take notice. Put your ear for a few minutes to CNN for example. Listen to all that chatter concerning blame, readiness, population, fairness, monetary shift, political equity. Bob Dylan can almost be heard in the background.

Sep 4, 2005

Are you old enough to remember the term, "boat people"? The government has chartered three Carnival cruise ships to house thousands of Hurricane victims. That news made me start to ponder the whole notion of floating inventories of people. I don't know if there will be bingo and pool parties, but I have to assume the rooms are the same size as the ones I've been in on those ships. The one thing I recall is the strong urge to get the hell out of that room after only briefly changing clothes for dinner. Ah well. At least the ships toilet tanks are large enough to take a good sized load. Not sure what they will do with it though....maybe float over to New Orleans and blow the tanks on Louisiana now and again. But the larger point has to do with real estate. Prices of real estate are driven up by speculation and profit. Pure capitalism (well...as pure as it can be these days). So now the taxes on profits of that specualation, which drives up prices of real estate, are being expended to rent space for people who cannot afford real estate just now. So I suppose speculation on real estate will have to increase and real estate prices and taxes will have to rise to continue to afford inventorying people who are driven out of the real estate market by speculation.

Maybe it's me, but there seems something a bit odd about that. Ah well. Compared to a billion a week to blow up Iraq, it isn't much. All things being relative.

Sep 3, 2005

Bush mid term check.

War? Check.

Prices? Check.

Fuel? Check.

Economy? Check.

National Security and Readiness? Check.

Looks like we got pretty much what we voted for.

Sep 3, 2005

Couple of thoughts on the usual subjects, gas and socio economics. First gas: I noticed today that traffic here in Atlanta (Labor Day weekend) was worse than EVER. MORE aggressive. Huge SUV and truck traffic. Stop and go. Brakelights everywhere. Oceans of stopped cars with running engines. Giant road factories converting petroleum to brake dust, starting, gunning, then grinding back to a stop. Air conditioners blowing, cell phones charging, brake lights burning. This proves to me the unquestionable inelasticity of fuel prices....with gas at three fifty a gallon now...more even than processed milk.... proving that the earth is a genuine cash cow to the oil producers. They must now know that they can run the price up many times this multiple and not only will we BUY it, we will WASTE it like fools. Gawd, are these Ay-rabs gonna be so very rich. They probably knew this all along. And if we have any money left, the taxes we pay will go in very heavy measure to shore up a city that will flood again . And again. And again. (the rest pouring into a war weary country which will NEVER be democratic in nature) And for our money we will get a city where liquor, and breast bearing, and parades, and bead tossing, and bad girl videos, and laziness, and baby making and class poverty can continue it's long long jazzy tradition. At least until next time when they can blame others for allowing a hurricane to disrupt this vital set of social behaviors. Wotta country.

Sep 2, 2005

OK...the big one. The tough one. Have you awakened yet personally to the number of people that exist relative to resources available? New Orleans' exodus shows thousands of young poor black women each with babies on the hip, babies at the teat, babies babies babies. Iraq stampedes a few religious marchers and kills almost a thousand souls in the doing. Population. It has to be considered. The very mention of such a thing is so very politically incorrect. When the Chinese finally had to face it, they took huge criticism for their actions from us who are only a couple of centuries old. Population. Time to think about it. Angry just from the hubris of the mention? Then you're part of the problem.

Sep 1, 2005

Ever notice how well fed those are who give advice to the desperate? Now I do not and will never condone the likes of looting, stealing, killing etc. But desperation makes people do things they would never otherwise consider. And although we never speak of it, the masses are getting....uh....masser. More and more. Miles and miles of newborns. Babies. More people who will want cars and gas and sausage and ice and money and babies and more gas. News came of a man who shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice. In Hattiesburg, Mississippi....a place very north of the gulf yet somewhat affected by the storm. Killed his sister. Over ice! Meanwhile, icy cocktails in hand, the Bush entourage having cancelled the last few hours of vacation from the likes of Washington and the White House, dipped the wing of Air Force One and glanced out the window so he could tell the rest of us how bad things look. How very Jesse Jackson. Meanwhile the news anchors tell of the worst cases, the lost husbands, the babies halved in two. Now...a word from our sponsors who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per minute to bring you the latest word on orange juice, or gas medicine, or toilet paper.....and by the way...they want you to give charitably to disaster relief. Now...back to the news.

August 31, 2005

So....Prez George is coming in from Vacation two days early. He heard there was storm damage. He heard that gas prices are rising. He heard that his war is going south. He heard that mommies of dead soldiers are unhappy with him. He heard that his support base is now mostly from the wild-eyed Pat Robertson types. So he's coming in. He's decided to 'chair a meeting'. Wotta guy!

August 29, 2005

Disturbing to me that thousands of people would get caught up in a storm after so much effort is expended to advise them to leave. They watch as the roof is ripped away. They cry as the water rises. Some die. Most suffer. We all pay. I think, if warned staunchly that a dangerous storm is coming I wouild find my way inland. And in that same vein, if someone warned me convincingly that war, tedious confrontation, societal anger, fractious and untruthful decision making and resource shortage would result in an unwise vote, I would try to find my way inland. But such is the life we have. Such is our reality. Even as the "storm" rages, we find looters, we find criers, we find blind followship of the absurdly unwise.

August 24, 2005

Obesity ranking of states is disputed

A controversial report released Tuesday by a health advocacy group says Mississippi has the highest percentage of obese adults (28.1%) and Colorado the lowest (16.4%). Trust for America's Health (Washington, D.C.) ranked all 50 states (except Hawaii for which figures were not presented) in percentage of obese adults. A person is considered obese if he(she) is roughly 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight. Ten states have obesity rates greater than 25%, and most of those are in the Southeast, the report says. Obesity rose in every state except Oregon, which held steady at 21%.

Which seems to lead to the conclusion; chubby people also like to argue.

August 23, 2005

Maybe it's me....but does it seem that G. Bush is all for the rule of majority...UNLESS of course he is not in the majority, in which case his view is the only view to be endured? Does this sound....uh.....familiar? (subliminal chanting of "Richard Nixon" in the background) If the majority of Americans, paying for a needlessly and dishonestly entered war with their lives and resources, suggest that perhaps there may be another path to consider, should it be considered or even heard? It's one thing if a guy is crazy enough to continue banging his own thumb with a hammer. It's quite another when the thumb belongs to someone else. Yet alas, here's a prez whose first term was basically a Supreme Court appointment (and now he postures to return the favor in a co-opted kind of way). A prez who seemingly thinks he knows what's best for a populace which is getting more vocal about what they think contrarily on those matters. Still, when considering all this, one has to recall that a majority of voters put the guy into office for a second term and come what may, one hopes that majority may have put SOME thought into the stakes of their decision. Somehow I'm not particularly hopeful that such was the case. At one time I was a desciple of the wisdom of the electorate. No more.

So...on to even goofier right wingers,,, from Bloomberg News; Robertson, a television evangelist, said yesterday on a broadcast of his ``700 Club'' program that Chavez is a ``dangerous enemy.'' He said killing Chavez would be cheaper than going to war with Venezuela to remove him.

Let us all stand now to sing from the evangelical hymnal:

Kill them, Kill them, certainly cheaper than woooooo...ar, Kill them, Kill them, might as well do it nowwwwww

Kill them, Kill them, gas can't get very much highhhhhh....yer

Kill them, Kill them, that's cuz we're allll-ways right.

August 22, 2005

So now we got Joan Baez in on the act. And the motorcycle gang is putt putting around THAT act in their own little silly act. One faction supports, the other against. What are they supporting? The news says WAR. They support war? Hell of a thing to support, don't you think? War in general they support? Or against anybody in particular? Or just enough death to keep their scooters putting around? But nobody is going to confuse these folks with Rhodes Scholars, are they? The real travesty is that we have national leadership that creates factions, disturbs the peace, stirs the pot, dis-equalibreates. What have we got in Iraq but a group of Sunnis and another group of Shiites and another group of....who really gives a damn....the point is that our leadership has proven beyond a doubt and an argument that they are men of disruption, of war, of disturbance, of waste, of fighting, of divisiveness. And the voters made that happen. And the voters deserve every single disruption that they are going to get...including the eventual disruption of energy flow. And just let this BRILLYUNT leadership go ahead and try to have an oil-based economy without the oil. Then Joan can sing without the amp, and George can walk where he's going, and the voters can fight to the death, admonishing the other side for their dearth of principle. What a hell of a mess.

August 13 2005

So there's news of a war protester....and Bush limoes right by in a way only a King might. Let 'em eat rations, eh George? But this time King George is right. We have an all volunteer military and the kid volunteered to be in the King's army, and armies go to war, not always for a particularly honorable reason nor for a particularly worthy cause. Armies go to war because the King gets all pissed off and sends them to die for his cause. And so they die. Dead. G'bye. Nobody else except maybe mommy usually really cares. The cause is the issue, not the dead individual kid from DeMoines. King George (and his kids) just like King Richard back in another unpopular war will end up eating steak and being patted on the back every day of his long celebrated and highly protected life and the dead volunteer soldier's mommy will protest herself into a short, unhappy miserable existence. I just wonder who that protesting mommy voted for? If for Bush, how dare Ms. Sheehan to protest that which her vote help foist upon the rest of us. If for Kerry, how dare she think the majority does not rule in our democracy (tongue in Supreme Court cheek here). If she didn't vote at all, and sadly the odds are in favor of that possibility, how dare she protest that which she did not bother to repress with the one tool democracy gives her.

I depart from the usual on today's blog-blather because a member of my own family writes to tell me of disagreement. Duh. The world is filled to the brim with thoughtless, stupid, forgetful, spiteful and sometimes even crazed people who somehow think they have a lock on wisdom. And sometimes one of them becomes the King. Now THAT'S democracy.

8 9 2005

Convinced yet? Are you convinced that gas for your car/SUV/truck/boat/leaf blower will approach five bucks a U.S. gallon? And not a single piece of paper on which not a single big shot Washington do-nothing signs his mostly meaningless name will change that for the immediate term. Unless....(there's always an "unless" isn't there?)....unless these guys wake up from their legislative sleep and tax gas to the expected level RIGHT NOW. That's right. Five dollar gas today. We're going to pay it anyway....so let's be wise just this once and tax ourselves against the inevitable, suck up the inflationary consequences, listen to the bidnessmen howling and complaining just before they build the new price into their profit structures along with their inevitable fees and charges, then put those funds to work to establish whatever alternative transport systems and energy sources possible. Is it possible to live without gasoline fired engines? Didn't humanity do just that as recently as the 19th century? Are there too many of us now? (Stop and ponder THAT one awhile, why doncha?) Are we helpless without combusting something? Without the Benzene ring? Without ammonium nitrates? Plastics? How will we find out? I propose that we will approach this problem in one of two ways; 1) we run out of petroleum and scramble to burn anything possible killing each other Mad Max style, fighting over the last barrel (kind of what we're doing now on a global/middle east scale if you think about it). 2) Prepare and pay now for what we know is going to be a difficult transition to a different life. Want to guess which of those two roads I predict we will take?

8 7 2005

Have you heard? The nerve of these people! Have they not been taught that Newton's theory of gravity is only a theory? Can they not understand that things in science that are only in theory can never be proven thus those things that we observe can only be believed in the fog of further and ongoing questioning? If an alternative theory is proposed to explain gravity, which is only explained by theory, shouldn't it or they be taught in schools? Should not the principal be forced via edict by us who still have our senses to go into each class to read and emphasize to those students that alternative theories to explain the existence of gravity be considered? After all, gravity, as even our exalted and envisoned leadership has proclaimed publicly, cannot be empirically explained because we are just not advanced enough yet in our postulations to make absolute declarations of the causes of the existence of gravity? Let us all stand here, affixed to our planet, somehow never flying off into space but standing upright always weighted to terra firma, forged in our resolve to never float away unexpectedly as we explain gravity with our most advanced and our wisest theories.

And have you heard? The nerve of these people. Have they not been taught that Darwin's theory of Evolution is only a theory? ...

8 2 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist spoke by video to the first "Justice Sunday" evangelical rally in April, but he wasn't invited to address "Justice Sunday II," even though it's in his home state of Tennessee.

Ya see, Bill, these right wing types only want to hear what they want to hear. Got another opinion? Don't agree to every last syllable with the party line? No tolerance for you, Bill. Yer out. But not with me, Bill. While I would never ever ever ever vote for you, I respect the fact that you actually are trying to think on your own. I hope that there are other members of the venerable old Senate that is made of such timber. It's ok to change your mind, and in fact a thinking man probably cannot avoid changing his mind on many issues. But prepare to stand before the non thinking masses while they hold up bathroom shoes at a non-think rally chanting, "flip flop". Doesn't matter to them if you offered your very life in war, in deed, in effort. They just want to hear what they want to hear. And they will go to meeting every single week of their lives to be sure they get that diet of non-think droning of non-think stuff so vital to their immediate comfort.

8 1 2005

Ahhhh.....feedback. Seems others have been thinking about Social Security as well. But with a twist. Seems folks want Congress to cease excluding themselves from the SS system in favor of something a little ....uh.... more favorable to themselves. Perhaps live a little like the folks onto whom they impose their lawmaking, and upon whom the courts seem so willing to determine lives. Certainly it is tempting to think that if Congress were dependent on Social Security (and limited private healthcare coverage?) it might take on a different flavor and by all indication some want to make this an issue in the next election. To this I respond: good idea...and completely undoable. Congress will never pass an act that is counter to their own personal interests. And the electorate can't even stand firm together long enough to vote a president into office based on an accurate vote count. (Yes.....we will never ever forget that election. It changed the way we see the courts, government, the law of the land itself. Congrats Bush...that is your legacy.) So unless it comes down to life and death for millions, nothing much will happen beyond an email chain letter (itself a most inefficient way (talk is cheap) of getting any significant political action).     

It goes way back, but actually rests on the same socio-economic proclivity that helped kill communism in the USSR.....the first tenet of the manifesto was, "to each according to need, from each according to ability". That of course required an overseeing political body to determine who needed what....and guess who they decided was the most deserving? Themselves of course. Taken to the extreme as was done, it was their own undoing in the long haul. Congress is no different. They see themselves (rhetoric notwithstanding) not as public servants preserving the sanctity of free ideals so much as hard working citizen-Americans who should be compensated for the efforts and sacrifices they make in behalf of and as elected representative of a narrow constituency. (Couldn't be too awful since so many of them sign on for another election term after term.)

But....if folks REALLY want to make a change in this regard....they always have the vote. Want to guess whether or not they exercise it?

7 29 2005

Wow....I just heard a remarkable NPR item from past Senator Bob Graham. Basically it boiled down to this: "Burn Theirs First". The gist of this is to conserve our domestic energy resources at all cost and for as long as possible. Import everything we can now and save our own. It's the cornerstone of many countries, Columbia being one example. And if you think just a moment, that's exactly what the Chinese are attempting just now. Buy and consume offshore energy resources. Buy time. Consume theirs, save ours. A government can print a unit of currency. It cannot print a barrel of oil. Eventually and hopefully oil will be passe', but look in your rearview mirror and you'll see a big, gas hauling SUV bearing down on you. That SUV has millions and millions of sisters and in America we seem to have no self control in this regard. And coupled with ships at sea, planes in the air, power generating stations, leaf blowers, outboard pleasure boats and anything that burns fossil fuel, we (the earth) are burning oceans of the stuff daily. And unless petroleum is being somehow magically replaced deep in the earth's core (possible but not likely) it's just a matter of time. And that is a dirty little secret we had better awaken to very very soon. So....burn theirs...not ours. And while I'm mouthing off about it....let's try to set as little as possible of it ablaze needlessly by having little wars with people who possess little or no sense of world perspective.

7/26/2005

Does it ever occur to you just how dumb a suicide bomber must be? I mean really....to blow oneself up for....Allah? Hatred of others? Idealogy? Or rather is it more like that poor middle eastern woman whose face had been so terribly disfigured by fire that she was just looking for a way out of a miserable life. Vulnerable, poor, unwanted, disfigured. What an easy mark for those who truly are dastardly in soul and spirit to enlist in their little game of....blowing oneself up for no reason. I have to say, and it makes me blush to state the obvious....if I were a suicide bomber and I knew I had one shot at it, I wouldn't even consider taking out a few dozen, or even a few thousand. What's the difference if you go for the big one. Dead is dead and even a suicide bomber should probably be able to make that distinction. If I weren't toting fifty megatons in that backpack, hell with it. I ain't going. At any rate, the silver lining to all this is that there is one (or fewer) less of them every time a bomb goes off. They stand to cause their own attrition in terms of willingness and intellect. And at some point a threshhold has to be reached amongst those left standing whereby the very next level of available intelligence may cause it to occur to some fanatic otherwise willing to blow themselves up: there has to be a point. A lesson. Some value from this act should be gleaned....some reason should be clear to those against whom I splatter my innerds. If not, why on earth do it? Life is such a mystery.

7/22.2005

Today I'm thinking about Social Security and the number that links me to it. We live in a world that digs tunnels from one country to another (24 found from Mexico, one found lately coming southward from Canada). People do this to bring drugs, illegal people, anything they don't think is kosher into America and profit by it. And evidently there is a ready market for whatever they bring. The motive is usually money. For enough money we/they sell out citizenship and to hell with everyone else. If he gets his (and gets away with it) that's all that counts. What's that to do with SS? We live in a time when people steal other people's very being. Their good name. Their very identity. If your SSN and mother's maiden name is known to someone not YOU.....they can be you anyway. At least until the bill comes due. When the bill arrives....you're you again. And it's funny how little diligence sellers exercize making sure it's actually YOU at the time of sale, and how MUCH diligence is exercized to extract the money from the real YOU (or blight the real-you record) when it's time to pay up.

I placed a call to the SS Administration and they acknowleged the problem. While there are legitimate reasons to pass your SSN to someone such as to the HR folks of your employer so they can administer your SSN account, or perhaps a prospective lender who wants those BRILLIANT folks at Equifax et al to confirm you are you and that the history of YOU is pure, at least payment-history wise. I personally give a fake SSN to anyone on the periphery of legitimacy who demands it (yes....people actually DEMAND it....one lady demanded it for a subscription to a newspaper. Another lady demanded it so I could enroll in a computer course. Not really sure how they intended to contribute to my retirement, but they got the fake and that seemed to make them happy.....and I feel for whomever owns the real number that is my fake.)

So the point (you knew I had one): folks who will go to the trouble of subverting the nation by bringing in illegal substances for personal profit will have no compunction whatsoever to ruin your life financially and otherwise for the slightest little gain for themselves. If we personalize things like that, perhaps we can see our nation in a different light. The perspective that whether against one of us or all of us, subversion is the same. Until we collectively take the high road, individually we will forever be relegated to the low. And heaven help us if instead of a big bag of illicit weed to cloud up a few young minds and turn a few thousand bucks for someone who will end up in jail anyway, a 20 megaton nuculer (isn't that the way it's pronounced these days?) device is smuggled through and placed in the bus station in your fair city. Time to get involved at the individual level....don't you think?.

7/21/2005

A billion dollars a year. For an energy plan. About time, but what will it mean? Never mind that the comparible cost of the needless (but now not optional) expense of a billion dollars a week keeping combat troops in Iraq makes it seem low, however the ideas so far heard floating around go something like, "the key to keeping oil prices down is to find and pump more oil". I would like to offer my own ideas along those lines and I will only charge a million dollars a year. Savings to taxpayers $999,000,000 per year. A bargain. However taking toungue from cheek to be serious a moment, our country has always been so very inventive, and when obfuscating rules are not completely out of control this inventiveness can be counted on to direct its collective power to solving problems as gargantuan as finding adequate energy sources clean enough to be useful, adequate enough to be economically feasible, and timely enough to perhaps save us from having to watch our leadership behave hand in hand with oil shieks from the very cultural areas of our world that produced people capable of 9-11 type behavior...behavior of jealousy, of malice, of crazed uncompromise. So I vote yes. Spend the billion a year. I only ask that Congress try to let some of it trickle to those who can make good and meaningful use of it. (Isn't that proof of how hopeful an American can be?) I would be very disappointed if Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.'s nieces, nephews, wife, sons, daughters etc. were given grants and internships to study what makes oil pumps rock up and down, metaphorically speaking.

7/20/2005

On Nominee Roberts; Does anyone hear it? Deafening silence? Not a peep about Rove and all the lies of that painfully recent time. The administration is very good at manipulating, and some in key places are very very good at letting them. So.... if the Dems are smart (and why start NOW?) they would band together and vote this guy in without so much as a peep. Banners and hurrahs. He's going in anyway. So let him. Pat the manipulators on the back for their good judgment and fine choice. Hail fellow, well thought....what a guy! This will set the stage for the big argument that comes when the next old fool leaves the Court. Whether a dem (unlikely) or a Bush makes that nomination, a REAL fight is likely in our future in an effort to counterbalance the fulcrum whereon the moderate and left is sitting light and high and where foolish choices of those sitting on the low side of that fulcrum will haunt millions of us for decades if not centuries. Time to be smart about this. The manipulators have shown their cards. If they are to be sucker-punched, best to wait whilst shaking their hands in political unity. After all, they invented the style.

7/19/2005

This can only have the sound of "me tooooo, me tooooo", but.....where on earth is the outcry? Where is the rage normally associated with being lied to? The man responsible for telling the world what the leader of the free world is thinking and doing LIED outright. The White House Press Secretary can be seen in the news lately, over and over, saying Rove had nothing to do with the outing of a CIA undercover operative....DURING WARTIME.....for SPITEFUL POLITICAL REVENGE. Prez Bush can be seen walking the pastoral paths of the Whitehouse grounds with Rove, blithely supporting the liar, and probably lying about that. And it was just another lie. If the Whitehouse Press Secretary did not know it was a lie at the time but knows it now, why does he not quit? I would if the person to whom I was responsible fed me lies like that to front to the planet ruining my credibility henceforth and forever. But then, this isn't the big lie....the expensive lie. The big lie was the WMD lie that Congress was given, punctuated by the otherwise good name of Colin Powell, which ultimately clouded the well meaning General's personal place in history, and upon which Congress engaged war spending BILLIONS and wounding thousands, killing to date amost two thousand American service people. Now THAT....THAT was a LIE worth noting. Way bigger than, "I am NOT a crook". And where is the public outcry for spending tax resources...for killing their sons meaninglessly? Seems awfully quiet out there.

7/18/2005

We have to ask ourselves if we're paying attention. We have a beligerant in the White House, a "fortunate son" whose proclivity it is to speak to shill audiences, each screened for a personal political view in agreement with his own. We have a drawn out war the pols seem hellbent not to win, an insider source, a jailed journalist, a silent (or uncooperative) White House Press Secretary, and....uh....all the President's men. Familiar? Does anyone even remember Richard Milhouse Nixon? Are the similarities of our day not screaming at us? And if so, the BIG BIG question is, how does an electorate get pushed through this gate a second time so soon after the first? Are these the traits we admire in a national leader? Is this the face we want to put on our international personality? Is that who we really are? Do we live in a world where "long live the king" is the order of the day as long as the smelly political news doesn't interrupt "The Simpsons"? Are we waiting for the BIG one? What was the BIG one for Nixon? Two reporters persisted in the face of long odds against them, threats, loss of their jobs, and they uncovered what? A beligerant, politically vengeful, always suspicious, forever "right" President whose only crime was that he took things a half millimeter farther than the last guy? Or perhaps just had the bad luck to get caught at pilfering papers in a Washington hotel? Tape recordings of a paranoid individual, cursing his detractors, willing to call the military out against college students (even shot some of them) and scheming to preach to ..... uh.... shill audiences? What does this say about the current Congress and Senate? The Supreme Court? Are they just filling space for a self given increase in salary? And the worst of this....what does this say about us as individual voters? Whatever happened to the collective wisdom of the electorate? With that comes our greatest national loss...the loss of faith in each other to make the right choice collectively. To do the right thing collectively. To stand up against the darker sides of human motivations in favor of a longer term perspective. With the nation so divided, haves or not, liberal or conservative, Kerry or Bush, life or choice, privileged or exploited, we have set our own stage for a new direction. Maybe in some bizarre way the Bush administration, painful though it seems intent on being, can be an early indicator for the thoughtful. Perhaps we can peek into the future of our culture simply by reading the current signs in a thoughtful way. At least we can hope. Or perhaps at most......who knows.

7/11/2005

The truth of our day: each time you gas up the family SUV at your local friendly filling station (itself possibly soon to be owned by the Chinese government) you are financing the very people who want to kill you and your family. They want to kill you because in their eyes, you are an “infidel”. You do not view spiritual matters as they, and their plan is simple. Eliminate you. Even if it means killing themselves to do it. Their basic resource is….your money.

Since our leadership seems lately to have no sense of this at the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial levels, we the people must now act to preserve ourselves. We may not decide collectively to do this anytime soon, but decide we will if we wish to survive. The first step is to stop expending our national resources needlessly. We have spent billions, sixty billion here, sixty billion there, another sixty recently, fighting an Iraqi enemy not one of which was involved with the 9-11 attack. The leader, Saddam, is in jail, and still we spend billions fighting people who, with each bullet fired, respect us that much less. Instead, we should be spending those billions in solving our energy needs here at home. Hydrogen….a fuel of choice, solar (those billion-year-old solar reactions are not nuclear in nature any more than the sun is a firey chariot flying through the sky…we should try to find out what that is and use it). Any and all of these research programs would have cost a fraction of all this war expenditure….a war we should not be fighting in the first place…at least in Iraq. Once we wean ourselves from oil, the less than enlightened leadership can stop holding hands (recall that literal picture?) with the Saudis, most of whom WERE constituents of 9-11 who attacked us in New York. We have no choice but to financially strangle the enemy. We must deny them funding any way possible, and we must encourage like minded allies to do the same in the name of THIER best interest. The "terrorists" have to live, and without oil they’ll get busy doing something else.

We have to stop with the drugs. Another source of revenue to the enemy. Once no money comes in for oil, the drug business cannot be allowed to take up any slack. These people must be forced to earn a living the harshest way possible. No more idle hands. No easy drug income from poppy production etc. No easy oil money. Americans need to clean themselves up. Stop throwing oil based burger wrappers onto our own precious homelands, tossed from speeding oil fired SUV’s. Stop clouding our judgment with unnecessary drugs. Until we make these kinds of social resolves, prepare for long, difficult, awful war-like news to continue.

American voters need to clean house. Leadership bickers while Washington burns. The President, the Senate, lately even the Supreme Court Judges all making terrible, even nonsense decisions for regular folks (take your home for a burger stand? jailing reporters for thoughts of writing a story? usurp the electoral process?) . Time to get involved and invoke some common sense. Vote out those who stink up our hallowed halls of America and bring in people who, although perhaps not as colorful and telegenic, perhaps may bring back a sense of who we really are.

A good role model is Tony Blair. When London was bombed in four places, he didn't deploy heavy bombers to go kill folks he likes least. If he had, we would have judged him and the British just as the world judges us for doing exactly that. Instead, the British took a measured tone, decided who was responsible through careful analysis, and they deal with the problem without missing a single step in their daily affairs. This is the mark of leadership. Not some johnny sixgun ready to give up the lives of thousands of volunteer service people just to get even quick and make possible a few photo opportunities that turn into a decades long bloodbath. The voters must be wiser in their choice of leadership. We have those kinds of troubles at hand and we cannot afford to suffer fools gladly without expecting to pay an enormous price, long term.