Saturday, October 4, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
Failure IS an option
And maybe the lesser of the bad options--for there seem to be no good options.
The Congress has, a few hours ago, passed legislation for spending in the amount of $8.514 to up to $115 and perhaps more. To restore the banking industry and dwindling credit availability. And ultimately allow failed policies to remain in effect.
Throughout this year I've grown increasingly aware that our society has made too many bad decisions and is perfectly capable of collapse.
One blogger opined this week that, should this bill pass, people should stop paying their mortgages and use the money to purchase food and/or gold (I'd add guns and ammo) as those commodities will have real worth even as the value of the home falls. After the default simply wait for the government to arrange a new and lower cost mortgage. After all, the government isn't going to come around and evict you, right?
But, as I understand this mess, it was the government that coerced lenders to make loans to people that could not pay. And even though the alarm was raised the snouts remained greedily in the troughs
with compensation packages that boggle the mind.
In the 70s and 80's I wondered at the glut of attorneys that our schools were graduating--what were they all to do?
Now I know.
Wouldn't it be a bitter irony to find that the first country founded on the Rule of Law, this Great Experiment, were to fail and fall because of lawyers?
Please--please don't entertain the thought that it couldn't happen. When my maternal grandfather (b 1889) came to live out his senescence in my childhood home we acquired many things--some fine furniture and such--but what fascinated me was a pre-WWI encyclopedia and the maps of the world held my highest attention. Even a 1988 map of Eurasia would not show the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Balkan states or the many breakaway countries of the former Soviet Union.
What might the future look like? Anarchy or a strong man (or men). Divisions of the land by those that produce food and fuel from those that can't? Military coup?
California--the richest state in our country--is ready to go begging for a bailout from the federal government to meet state government workers' salaries. If denied California will have to lay off teachers and other state employees.
Imagine if this were to happen in your state. Schools would maintain a minimum staff to warehouse children for the day (or they could stay at home with their laid off parent). What if we couldn't pay our emergency personnel, our firefighters, our police?
While the Kroger still has some canned goods and staples it will be the armed man who gets and protects his food.
or
We can have the right man in charge--to tell us we have to be patriotic and tighten our belts, a man who will ensure that we all will be employed by his State and there will be enough to go around after it is confiscated from the wealthy. And we'll accept that because we will have no choice.
And then...
We can pray for that military coup.
The Congress has, a few hours ago, passed legislation for spending in the amount of $8.514 to up to $115 and perhaps more. To restore the banking industry and dwindling credit availability. And ultimately allow failed policies to remain in effect.
Throughout this year I've grown increasingly aware that our society has made too many bad decisions and is perfectly capable of collapse.
One blogger opined this week that, should this bill pass, people should stop paying their mortgages and use the money to purchase food and/or gold (I'd add guns and ammo) as those commodities will have real worth even as the value of the home falls. After the default simply wait for the government to arrange a new and lower cost mortgage. After all, the government isn't going to come around and evict you, right?
But, as I understand this mess, it was the government that coerced lenders to make loans to people that could not pay. And even though the alarm was raised the snouts remained greedily in the troughs
with compensation packages that boggle the mind.
In the 70s and 80's I wondered at the glut of attorneys that our schools were graduating--what were they all to do?
Now I know.
Wouldn't it be a bitter irony to find that the first country founded on the Rule of Law, this Great Experiment, were to fail and fall because of lawyers?
Please--please don't entertain the thought that it couldn't happen. When my maternal grandfather (b 1889) came to live out his senescence in my childhood home we acquired many things--some fine furniture and such--but what fascinated me was a pre-WWI encyclopedia and the maps of the world held my highest attention. Even a 1988 map of Eurasia would not show the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Balkan states or the many breakaway countries of the former Soviet Union.
What might the future look like? Anarchy or a strong man (or men). Divisions of the land by those that produce food and fuel from those that can't? Military coup?
California--the richest state in our country--is ready to go begging for a bailout from the federal government to meet state government workers' salaries. If denied California will have to lay off teachers and other state employees.
Imagine if this were to happen in your state. Schools would maintain a minimum staff to warehouse children for the day (or they could stay at home with their laid off parent). What if we couldn't pay our emergency personnel, our firefighters, our police?
While the Kroger still has some canned goods and staples it will be the armed man who gets and protects his food.
We can have the right man in charge--to tell us we have to be patriotic and tighten our belts, a man who will ensure that we all will be employed by his State and there will be enough to go around after it is confiscated from the wealthy. And we'll accept that because we will have no choice.
And then...
We can pray for that military coup.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
New Power
Please watch--less than 11 minutes
(link)
There is a new power at work and it's being used by both sides.
On the left it is dominated by short, buzz-word dominated, vicious, false or distorted attacks. These are usually short enough to be writ (in large letters) on a protest sign but derived from a million pages of convoluted disinformation about how the world should work.
The right trends to a greater depth of analysis (despite a generation taught to believe Archie Bunker was the archetype Conservative) but is based on ideas that can be presented in short and simple phrases--phrases like the Ten Commandments and the Biblical injunction that man shall have dominion over the world. Hard work should reap rewards. The best way to avoid war is to be the strongest of nations. Trust but verify. Even something as basic as life is better than death.
The new power is more citizen-based than ever before. It doesn't require the massive amounts of money to present as it would on TV but it does reach an audience. Just go to YouTube and enter "iran holocaust bomb" and watch the hit counter over the next few days.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Seven Years Gone
Looking back at last year's 9.11 post I recognize there are some things very much missing that I don't wish to omit this year:
Gratitude. Gratitude to George W. Bush and the military and intelligence agencies that have protected me and mine.
Pride. Pride in the fact that we took body and head (and wallet) shots and we stood up and took the fight to them. Pride that our young are so willing to sacrifice.
I also want to include a special shout out to class-mates Ingrid and Janet whom I've recently reconnected with after so many years. They were there--with me--in the first of the moments described below.
The following is an edited and updated repost from a year ago titled
Are these what have come to define my life?
No. Not just the attack of September 11, 2001.
November 22, 1963: It was two weeks to the day after my 9th birthday. The principal broke in on Mr. DiPietro's 4th grade classroom loudspeaker to announce an assembly--not in the auditorium/gymnasium but in the front courtyard. When the school had gathered with the flag overhead we were told that President Kennedy had been shot and later pronounced dead. The flag was lowered to half-staff and we had early dismissal. I walked the half-mile home in a childish state of bewilderment. Minutes later my sister, a senior in H.S., came home and burst into tears.
It was my first encounter with evil.
_____________________________________
The following 16 years saw me facing mostly the petty evils of childhood's transition to young adulthood. There were other assassinations--Dr. King followed by Robert Kennedy--and other far-away evils--the massacre at My Lai (all this in the first half of 1968, BTW) and the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972--but they were far-away events.
November 4, 1979: I was with Manny's band in a week long engagement at a supper club in Pennsylvania. I returned to my hotel room well-pleased after getting a fine deal on a pair of Nunn Bush dress loafers (PA has no sales tax on apparel) when I flipped on the TV to learn of the Embassy takeover.
I was just days away from attaining the quarter-century mark when 'students' attacked and captured the US embassy in Tehran. By this time I had shed the teenage liberalism inspired by the antiwar movement and understood better what was at stake. This was an act of war and that peanut farmer better do something and quickly.
But no. As the US fell deeper into our national malaise one failed rescue attempt was mounted but it would take an election to end the 444 days of nightmare.
In hindsight I wonder if the stated hatred of Carter for giving safe haven to the Shah had less to do with the timing of the hostages' release--Inauguration Day, 1981--than some less-than-veiled threats of the incoming administration's intentions.
__________________________________________
The first Intifada as I begin my international career. Four years on and the first World Trade Center attack takes place on Friday (Muslim 'sabbath'), February 26, 1993. I don't learn of it until my ship reaches port in San Juan and I open the local paper at a Hooters while waiting for my wings order.
__________________________________________
The next years feature the debacle in Mogadishu ('93), Bosnia ('93-'96), Khobar Towers bombing ('96), embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya ('98) and the USS Cole in October, 2000.
Moments after moments.
Moments upon moments
___________________________________________
September 11, 2001, is still more vivid to me than the births of my children.
How fucking sick is that?
I roused before 7 A.M. and fixed breakfast (oatmeal) for the turnettes and turnson. The Queen of Seoul dropped the twins at kindergartren on her way to work and I was alone with our son. It was an absolutely glorious, cloudless late-summer day in the northeast.
8:51 A.M. My morning radio show reports an airplane has struck the WTC. I turn on the TV.
(I remember that a rather large military plane flew into the Empire State building in fog during WWII.)
I call Q of S at work and tell her to get close to a TV.
A fraction of an hour later witness the 2nd plane hitting the north tower.
This is now intentional. This is now an assault--a deliberate attack.
I can't sit. I pace the living room glancing at the TV. Thankfully the turnson is preoccupied with his toys as I fret.
Then the Pentagon and reports of the downing of United Flight 93. (Initial reports were that we, US assets, shot down that plane at Shanksville. I don't doubt those initial reports nor do I blame my government for the action or the subsequent spin. This informed opinion in no way diminishes the incredible respect and regard I hold for the heroes on that flight.)
My eyes are leaking. They're not tears of sadness. They are tears of unrequited rage. I want to strip down, to don the blue woad and give my war cry. I desperately want to hit something but I have to be responsible for my not-quite-2 year old son.
Then come the images on TV that forever burn on the internal screen of my permanently scarred psyche. This evil, this abomination that could make my brothers and sisters choose to fall rather than be cremated alive.
Local radio reports that parents are picking kids up from schools. So I pack the turnson into his stroller and walk the half-mile to the turnettes' elementary in an adult state of contemplation on the nature and scope of evil.
Terror is fearing for your own life. Horror is the very human response to witnessing other people's terror.
Six Seven years later I want to hit something. My eyes are still leaking tears of impotent rage. God help me.
Gratitude. Gratitude to George W. Bush and the military and intelligence agencies that have protected me and mine.
Pride. Pride in the fact that we took body and head (and wallet) shots and we stood up and took the fight to them. Pride that our young are so willing to sacrifice.
I also want to include a special shout out to class-mates Ingrid and Janet whom I've recently reconnected with after so many years. They were there--with me--in the first of the moments described below.
The following is an edited and updated repost from a year ago titled
Moments
Are these what have come to define my life?
No. Not just the attack of September 11, 2001.
November 22, 1963: It was two weeks to the day after my 9th birthday. The principal broke in on Mr. DiPietro's 4th grade classroom loudspeaker to announce an assembly--not in the auditorium/gymnasium but in the front courtyard. When the school had gathered with the flag overhead we were told that President Kennedy had been shot and later pronounced dead. The flag was lowered to half-staff and we had early dismissal. I walked the half-mile home in a childish state of bewilderment. Minutes later my sister, a senior in H.S., came home and burst into tears.
It was my first encounter with evil.
_____________________________________
The following 16 years saw me facing mostly the petty evils of childhood's transition to young adulthood. There were other assassinations--Dr. King followed by Robert Kennedy--and other far-away evils--the massacre at My Lai (all this in the first half of 1968, BTW) and the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972--but they were far-away events.
November 4, 1979: I was with Manny's band in a week long engagement at a supper club in Pennsylvania. I returned to my hotel room well-pleased after getting a fine deal on a pair of Nunn Bush dress loafers (PA has no sales tax on apparel) when I flipped on the TV to learn of the Embassy takeover.
I was just days away from attaining the quarter-century mark when 'students' attacked and captured the US embassy in Tehran. By this time I had shed the teenage liberalism inspired by the antiwar movement and understood better what was at stake. This was an act of war and that peanut farmer better do something and quickly.
But no. As the US fell deeper into our national malaise one failed rescue attempt was mounted but it would take an election to end the 444 days of nightmare.
In hindsight I wonder if the stated hatred of Carter for giving safe haven to the Shah had less to do with the timing of the hostages' release--Inauguration Day, 1981--than some less-than-veiled threats of the incoming administration's intentions.
__________________________________________
My "antennae of evil" is now well lit.
The following years see the outrages that define the last 25 years. From the airplane hijack related execution of my fellow Marylander Robert Stethem to the cruise ship hijack and subsequent murder by throwing overboard in his frikkin wheelchair of Leon Klinghoffer. Near simultaneous bombings at airports in Vienna, Austria and Rome, Italy.The first Intifada as I begin my international career. Four years on and the first World Trade Center attack takes place on Friday (Muslim 'sabbath'), February 26, 1993. I don't learn of it until my ship reaches port in San Juan and I open the local paper at a Hooters while waiting for my wings order.
__________________________________________
The next years feature the debacle in Mogadishu ('93), Bosnia ('93-'96), Khobar Towers bombing ('96), embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya ('98) and the USS Cole in October, 2000.
Moments upon moments
___________________________________________
September 11, 2001, is still more vivid to me than the births of my children.
How fucking sick is that?
I roused before 7 A.M. and fixed breakfast (oatmeal) for the turnettes and turnson. The Queen of Seoul dropped the twins at kindergartren on her way to work and I was alone with our son. It was an absolutely glorious, cloudless late-summer day in the northeast.
8:51 A.M. My morning radio show reports an airplane has struck the WTC. I turn on the TV.
(I remember that a rather large military plane flew into the Empire State building in fog during WWII.)
I call Q of S at work and tell her to get close to a TV.
A fraction of an hour later witness the 2nd plane hitting the north tower.
This is now intentional. This is now an assault--a deliberate attack.
I can't sit. I pace the living room glancing at the TV. Thankfully the turnson is preoccupied with his toys as I fret.
Then the Pentagon and reports of the downing of United Flight 93. (Initial reports were that we, US assets, shot down that plane at Shanksville. I don't doubt those initial reports nor do I blame my government for the action or the subsequent spin. This informed opinion in no way diminishes the incredible respect and regard I hold for the heroes on that flight.)
My eyes are leaking. They're not tears of sadness. They are tears of unrequited rage. I want to strip down, to don the blue woad and give my war cry. I desperately want to hit something but I have to be responsible for my not-quite-2 year old son.
Then come the images on TV that forever burn on the internal screen of my permanently scarred psyche. This evil, this abomination that could make my brothers and sisters choose to fall rather than be cremated alive.
Local radio reports that parents are picking kids up from schools. So I pack the turnson into his stroller and walk the half-mile to the turnettes' elementary in an adult state of contemplation on the nature and scope of evil.
Terror is fearing for your own life. Horror is the very human response to witnessing other people's terror.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
TWO
In 61 days we will go to the polls and determine if Gramsci's long march has been successful.
We will learn whether the generations of our people educated since 1968 in moral relativism, political correctness, and multiculturalism have abandoned the principals and responsibilities of citizens in exchange for a new nomenclatura who have planned for this moment for a very long time.
We know now that the first
CND (ban the bomb) groups were Soviet funded and the long march continued through the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the greens, et al.We've allowed the chattering classes to continuously distract us and misdirect us and evade the issues.
We've allowed a good and honorable president to be vilified. His real record has been almost obliterated. Once there was a loyal opposition--no more.
The Anointed One of 2000's loss is the greatest gift to this year's Anointed One as it generated the famous BDS that has infected and is now mobilizing the susceptible to vote against anything remotely Bushesque. In point of fact, BDS is the only known syndrome that is contagious through TVs and computer monitors--it is also the only syndrome where the original target (G. W. Bush) of the condition can be retargeted in a matter of hours.
So now we witness The Maverick (I think that's a marketing ploy that McCain approves of) who in truth is The Moderate (very difficult term in this political climate) versus a far-left Progressive who has used issues of race and class (just look up community organizing) to rise to the national stage.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Symbols Matter
Maybe they think anyone old enough to recall the symbol portrayed here is in late-stage Alzheimers--a drooling old fool that can't connect two thoughts.
Maybe they thought no one would notice... or care.
In the world of politics and (inter)nationalism there has only ever been one meaning for this icon.
It is at the top of the 'artwork' decorating the outside of Pepsi Center for the Democratic National Convention.
No red, white and blue. No Stars and Stripes. No eagles or unfinished pyramids... No US icons at all.
Just that blood-red star.
Maybe they thought no one would notice... or care.
In the world of politics and (inter)nationalism there has only ever been one meaning for this icon.
It is at the top of the 'artwork' decorating the outside of Pepsi Center for the Democratic National Convention.
No red, white and blue. No Stars and Stripes. No eagles or unfinished pyramids... No US icons at all.
Just that blood-red star.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Chicago Style
Do you believe our (US) Fourth Estate is somehow 'in the tank' for O? Some, even in the MSM, are reporting that it seems so.
Personally... I find it difficult to believe that all in mainstream media are in thrall to the Pied Piper of Hyde Park.
There are critics and mild exposes but it is mind boggling that the MSM refuses to report information that is so readily available. Is it possible that our Freedom of the Press could be bought, co-opted or coerced?
This question is, of course, rhetorical. The next is not.
Can there be any other explanation?
Allegedly fair and balanced Fox News Channel cast a special report on 18 August titled Presidential Character & Conduct 2008: Barack Obama. It skipped over a bit.
O's maternal grandparents were communists. His Kenyan father was a communist.
As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."His mother seems to have been... a rebellious young woman.
His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."
Who, while being raised by his grandparents in Hawaii, steered a 13-14 year old boy into the mentorship of CPUSA (Communist Party USA) member Frank Marshall Davis--A man who had fled Chicago in 1954 for the then US territory before being caught in an FBI gauntlet? O spent 1975--1979 absorbing this man's poetry and thought.
Off to Boston to get a bit more than street cred O gets to be editor of the Harvard Law Review without ever publishing a single paper of his own.
Then back to Chitown with a prestigious degree for more... organizing. Let me be very clear--organizing means getting wealth from them that has to them that don't. He worked for the Woods Fund from '93--'01. Business, industry and
O went on to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge along with Pentagon bomber William Ayers. The records of that foundation are in the University of Illinois at Chicago library but have not been released for study. As these papers are the only record of O ever running anything there are people who believe they have a right to examine them.
But when the shoe is on the other foot... Republican candidate for the open US senate seat in 2004 Jack Ryan had made public the divorce records with ex-wife actress Jeri Ryan but the custody records were sealed by request of both parties. In June of that year the Chicago Tribune and WLS TV requested that the custody records be released and a willing judge overturned what had been a settled case. The details were sufficiently sordid that Ryan dropped his candidacy and... well... O was a shoe-in.
If literally hundreds--maybe thousands--of us on the blogs can ferret out the words and associations and intent of O why is the MSM mute? In 1996 details of illegal Chinese and Indonesian donations to the Clinton campaign were readily reported. In 1998 Drudge broke the story of the blue dress and it was all over network news.
Now the silence is deafening.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
