new news

So now we learn that we have more houses abandoned in the United States than we've ever had, since they started tracking such statistics--in 1956. 18.6 MILLION homes abandoned. Empty. No one home. Zilch. 2.9% of all homes in the United States. Abandoned. There's some cheery little news on a Monday, huh?


Thanks for not regulating that banking industry much, George!

An open question of the people of America

You aren't reading one thing about the situation in Iraq and about what's going on there, are you?

I lied or I was wrong or something...

I can't quit with the important stuff. I'm not going to rant and rave but I can try to disseminate good, solid, important information. So here goes.

Did you see this?

The Three Trillion Dollar War

by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes

When the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Americans were told Iraqi oil would cover the costs of the war and rebuilding. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld scoffed at estimates of $100 billion.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes raised a stir in 2006 by estimating the real cost of the war to be $1 trillion. That estimate has been tripled and the title of their new book is "The Three Trillion Dollar War."

See the author's answers to questions at:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/qna/forum/three_trillion_dollar_war/index.html

Also, on a related topic, if you aren't familiar with Joe Galloway, he's a columnist/reporter for McClatchy Newspapers and seems to write some good, thought-provoking stuff. You can find him here:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/galloway/

A Change is comin'

You know what? I got to thinking today that I'd write about the lack of sustainability of the way we-mankind-live today. I had written down several salient, pertinent points about the whole thing. How we're basically killing ourselves and wiping out all our resources. It had nothing to do with this being Earth Day, too. It just all came to me and I knew it was true and right.

But then, by the end of the day, I also realized that I'm not educating anyone; I'm not saving anyone--least of all mankind.

Millions of knuckleheads went out and voted for George W. Bush for President, not once but twice, unbelievable and anathema to me as that is. And no one is going to stop doing incredibly stupid stuff like that because of anything I write. Corporations and rich people are going to go on being incredibly selfish, self-centered, greedy and downright ugly and, yes, stupid. Nothing is going to change.

So you know what?

To hell with it.

Yeah. No kidding.

I don't want to be some bitter, old, well-informed fool who tries to go around letting people know what's "right".

I have my opinions and I'll just keep them.

I sent my brother an email with the information from Harper's, below--my earlier entry--on how the President is no doubt the worst one ever.

His response? He wrote back that he didn't want to hear negative things.

Yeah, well, good for him, right?

And that's the way it is with America. They don't want to face that their own brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, friends and soldiers are being killed for them and in their name. They don't wanna hear about Iraq. (It's the 4th highest priority right now, according to polls, in terms of importance, to the American voting public). They don't want to hear about how they need to sell their 8 cylinder automobile and conserve fuel.

They don't want to hear anything that's corrective. Nothing could possibly be wrong with the United States, could there?

Ralph Nader is right about America and corporations but hardly anyone cares.

Understand, this is not a response to my brother's email response. His stance is just typical of America. He's going along.

My response is more a desire on my part to try to just be pleasant and positive and not think or feel that I have to be aware of every problem in the United States--or the world--so I can write about either the wrong, what we should do to correct the wrong, or both.

Screw it.

I'm changing this blog to be one about photography, humor and beauty, if and when I can find it.

No one's looking anyway.

Worst. Ever. (Now official)

TITLE Worst. President. Ever. (from Harper's Magazine: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002804)

DEPARTMENT No Comment
BY Scott Horton

PUBLISHED April 5, 2008

“It would be difficult to identify a President who, facing major international and domestic crises, has failed in both as clearly as President Bush,” concluded one respondent. “His domestic policies,” another noted, “have had the cumulative effect of shoring up a semi-permanent aristocracy of capital that dwarfs the aristocracy of land against which the founding fathers rebelled; of encouraging a mindless retreat from science and rationalism; and of crippling the nation’s economic base.”

America’s historians, it seems, don’t think much of George W. Bush.

Now in all fairness, historians should wait a while before passing judgment on a president’s who served recently, much less one still in office. But the current incumbent is a special case. After all, 81 percent of Americans, according to a recent New York Times poll, believe he’s taken the country on the wrong track. That’s the highest number ever registered. The same poll also says 28 percent have a favorable view of his performance in office, which is also in Nixon-in-the-darkest-days-of-Watergate territory.

But, as George Mason University’s History News Network reports, the historians have a different measure. They want to stack him up against his forty-two predecessors as the nation’s chief executive. Among historians, there is no doubt into which echelon he falls–his competitors are Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Franklin Pierce, the worst of the presidential worst. But does Bush actually come in dead last?

Yes. History News Network’s poll of 109 historians found that 61 percent of them rank Bush as “worst ever” among U.S. presidents. Bush’s key competition comes from Buchanan, apparently, and a further 2 percent of the sample puts Bush right behind Buchanan as runner-up for “worst ever.” 96 percent of the respondents place the Bush presidency in the bottom tier of American presidencies. And was his presidency (it’s a bit wishful to speak of his presidency in the past tense–after all there are several more months left to go) a success or failure? On that score the numbers are still more resounding: 98 percent label it a “failure.”


Historians Rate George W. Bush a “Failure”
This marks a dramatic deterioration for Bush. Previously he wasn’t viewed in the most positive terms, but there was a consensus that he wasn’t the “worst of the worst” either. That was in the spring of 2004. In the meantime, Bush has established himself as the torture president, the basis for his invasion of Iraq has been exposed as a fraud, the Iraq War itself has gone disastrously, the nation’s network of alliances has faded, and the economy has gone into a tailspin–not to mention the bungled handling of relief for victims of hurricane Katrina. In 2004, only 12 percent of historians were ready to place Bush dead last.

Here are some of the comments that the historians furnished:

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of areas: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”

Looking backward, going forward

It's an old concept and it's hard to shake but too many of us--individuals, sure, but whole societies and our governments, federal, state and local--seem to be trying to go forward but are doing it by looking back. That is, we're using rules from the last 100 years or even more, thinking old rules and laws apply to current problems and situations.

Nowhere is this more true than in our wars. The saying is that the beginning of the war today, paraphrased, is always fought in the last war's terms. It is especially true now, with what must always be referred to as "Bush's War". The thought was, however much it's denied, that we need to go in and take over their oil, since we need it so badly into the future.

If you operate in the past, this is certainly true. We have used cars and combustion engines, etc., to propel our society forward, to increase our productivity and even for something as simple as recreation. Sure.

But we've known we need to ween ourselves off the "oil fix" since the 70's? Remember? Our President at the time warned us about it. You know, Jimmy Carter? And he was right, of course. We should have been turning down our thermostats in the winter and driving less and driving more fuel-efficient cars and giving tax breaks for truly beneficial, alternative energy sources.

We did it for a little while, it went away, so we voted in Ronald Reagan and walked away from it all, fools that we are.

So instead of looking and moving forward, we looked and moved backward. We made and drove ridiculously large automobiles (the kind we used to make fun of) and kept importing oil. And that's where we are today.

In the meantime, our government, acting on our behalf, looked in the rear view mirror and attacked another sovereign nation, quite against international law, as I've written here before--and refuse to forget.

So that's why we're in this huge mess we're in. We're in a war we shouldn't be in, losing soldiers we shouldn't be losing, sending money and materiel to another country--and in the Middle East, no less, where so much of the world's money is going, for great irony--and so on.

What we should do, for the world's and our own benefit, if we were to start looking forward--hey, I can be hopeful, can't I--is sponsoring a huge scientific effort to harness solar power, specifically with photovoltaic cells. The benefits are so great and plentiful it should be obvious to us all--even the "little guy" on the street.

First, we take all the pressure off the Middle East. That would take at least several minutes off the "doomsday clock". (Remember that? If not, Google same). It would ratchet us down from nuclear annihilation significantly. It would take ugliness out of relationships between the United States and the former Soviet Union--another big benefit--and so much more.

Additionally, it would take carbon dioxide production out of our existence, in a very real way. With efficient electrical power, created from photovoltaic cells, entire countries could and would power their homes and businesses this way. There would be no reason we couldn't have and use this as a source of energy for our automobiles. Those two switches alone would put us on phenomenally improved paths to energy independence and far cleaner air and atmosphere.

This would, of course, have the effect of reducing Global Climate Change in a very real way. This would help put off the radical change of the world's living spaces. The benefits are great and almost immediately tangible.

If we were looking forward, the "war" we should and would wage would be on ourselves, to do this very thing--perfect solar energy, specifically with photovoltaic cells. Keeping in mind the truism that "the greatest battle is the battle within", it seems like this is the new, forward-thinking war we should be in, if we should be in one at all. Battle ourselves to be more conservation-minded, more creative, more "new-thinking", if that's a word. Not to sound like a politician, God forbid, but we need to truly challenge ourselves to be and to do everything we can to bring about this specific change on this planet as soon as possible, for all our many benefits.

Sure, the current electrical power companies would have to lose out, as would the oil companies since we would need neither any longer but we've got to go forward, for all our survival.

The country that does this, that perfect solar power, will actually, truly win "the war". They will be the country that is far ahead technologically and so, reap the financial benefits. They'll be the big winners in this world--and not a shot will have been fired.

It's the same way with newspapers, technology, the paper industry and news, all wrapped in one. If we keep looking backward, we'll keep asking the question, "what's going to become of the newspaper?" But if we look forward, we'll realize we have to do away with newspapers for obvious reasons. First, we can no longer afford to keep cutting down trees to create them. Face it, the forests are the lungs of the planet (not my original thought) and we can't keep cutting them down so we can keep up on one- and two-day old news. The computer and the internet are far faster. Newspapers are failing anyway. We have to go on to this next medium. (Of course, we'll also have to force ourselves, as citizens of our countries and the world, to open our eyes and minds to news--some of which we won't want to hear or believe and this will be difficult, at least--but it's got to happen.

The same is true for the enitre paper industry. We really need, worldwide, to start going paperless. It was predicted years ago and we aren't even remotely close to it but we have to. We need to go paperless for the our own existence and the existence of the planet. Again, we're cutting down trees but can't afford to continue to do so. We've had paper for thousands of years but we really do, frankly, need to give them up. Face it. It's too obvious and too obviously true if we don't just continue to look back.

I'm convinced that the solutions to man's biggest problems--electrical energy, oil and the use of it, the automobile and the internal combustion engine, Global Climate Change, war and wars, war over energy, the seemingly intractable problems in the Middle East and so much more--are just beyond our grasp. The answers aren't that far away. We can reach and grab them, with effort. And we should--but we have to look forward--we have to stop looking back. We have to look at our situation now and into the future.

And we need to start very soon.

Pentagon Institute calls Iraq War "a major debacle"...

Normally I like and want to write my own stuff out here. After all, it's my blog, right? Besides, I want to both be original and I also want to bring new ideas and thoughts out but I can't say this any more authoritatively--or better--than this.



Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'
By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott, McClatchy Newspapers

Thu Apr 17, 8:38 PM ET

WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush 's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins , a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

It was published by the university's National Institute for Strategic Studies , a Defense Department research center.

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line.

At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion .

"No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans' benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel," wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq ) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East ," the report continued.

The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to halt the country's descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with its neighbors, the report said.

"Despite impressive progress in security, the outcome of the war is in doubt," said the report. "Strong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army."

"For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a 'must win,' but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a 'can't win.'"

The report lays much of the blame for what went wrong in Iraq after the initial U.S. victory at the feet of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld . It says that in November 2001 , before the war in Afghanistan was over, President Bush asked Rumsfeld "to begin planning in secret for potential military operations against Iraq ."

Rumsfeld, who was closely allied with Vice President Dick Cheney , bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the report says, and became "the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders."

" . . . the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld," it continues, "cajoled and pushed his way toward a small force and a lightning fast operation." Later, he shut down the military's computerized deployment system, "questioning, delaying or deleting units on the numerous deployment orders that came across his desk."

In part because "long, costly, manpower-intensive post-combat operations were anathema to Rumsfeld," the report says, the U.S. was unprepared to fight what Collins calls "War B," the battle against insurgents and sectarian violence that began in mid-2003, shortly after "War A," the fight against Saddam Hussein's forces, ended.

Compounding the problem was a series of faulty assumptions made by Bush's top aides, among them an expectation fed by Iraqi exiles that Iraqis would be grateful to America for liberating them from Saddam's dictatorship. The administration also expected that " Iraq without Saddam could manage and fund its own reconstruction."

The report also singles out the Bush administration's national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley , saying that "senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect."

Collins ends his report by quoting Winston Churchill , who said: "Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. . . . Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think that he also had a chance."

To read the report:

www.ndu.edu/inss/Occasional_Papers/OP5.pdf

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo


As an aside, I will say that I quoted this Churchill quote a year or more ago, out here, on the 'net, way before it was here. ke

Dollar vs. Euro

You should watch this YouTube video on the US Dollar vs. the Euro. It has some pretty incredible statistics and information in it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RhnHo3RDfg&feature=related


Keep in mind, it's in his best interest to give the information the way he is because he's selling the idea to the people in the room of buying gold and silver but he still has some pretty incredible statistics.

Food for thought.

New developments

Well, big new developments this morning, concerning the economy and neither is good.

First, wholesale prices are up a whopping 1.1 percent in March, nearly triple the expected increase. Added to it is that this is "the largest increase since a 2.6 percent rise last November, which had been the biggest one-month jump in 33 years."

Yeah, that's 33 years. Zounds.

In itself, it's just not good news, of course. With everything else that's going on--all the bad news like the deficit spending we're doing, the war in the Middle East, the ridiculously, embarassingly low dollar on the world market, etc.--this is what the Federal Reserve and most economists absolutely didn't want and wanted desperately to avoid. With the falling dollar and a slowing economy, virtually all conversations about that same economy virtually always ended with "Well, at least we don't have any inflation."

And here's why:

With a slow economy or recession and inflation, you get the dreaded "stagflation" of a stagnant economy and inflation.

Now, economists know very well what to do for one or the other, but when you put the two together, it makes for a heck of a mess, a very difficult situation because they just don't know what to do. For inflation, you increase interest rates, to slow the economy. For a recession, you cut interest rates. Either is simple. Together, it's a stinker. You really have to walk a tight rope.

And frankly, if you were a student of history, you would know that this is almost inevitable, given that this President and his administration took us into their arbitrary war, with all it's spending. In the 60's, it was President Johnson's war in Vietnam, with all it's spending--and no tax increases--that brought us to the inflation, later, in the 70's. Different presidents and administrations paid dearly for that--right Mr. Carter?

But that's what is so great about this President. He was never a student of history. Don't know anything about how economies work? Don't know how those same economies work with high spending, low interest rates, low tax rates and more tax cuts for big business and the wealthy? Don't know anything about creating power vacuums in a despotic country, especially in the Middle East? No problem. Don't worry your pretty little head. Your friends will take care of you and your friends, for sure.

Okay, so here we are with a "bad moon rising." We need some good news and here it is: The good news, if there is any, is that the Fed will now be much less likely to cut interest rates further. MUCH less likely. You can bet on that. The one thing that REALLY concerns that group is inflation. So now, the dollar will be much less likely to drop a whole lot farther, even though today it did, what with the psychology of the markets and all. It's not great news, but it's something.

The second big development today---yeah, just second--is that oil hit $114.00 a barrel today. Yup. Read it again: $114.00 a barrel for oil. It did back off but hey, it hit it. And the lower the dollar goes, the higher oil will go, certainly.

The thing is, I'm sure the Current Occupant of the White House--as Garrison Keillor and I like to call him (he created it, of course)--has no idea what to do about the economy. Heck, the Fed will hardly know what to do so how would he?

So, folks, all I'm sayin' is, it ain't good, it's not getting better and they won't know quite what to do. Terrific, huh?

Kevin Phillips says we're sliding into our "post-abundance" period. My description of his theory, not his.

My point is that we should all start paying attention now.

Say it once and repeat frequently

Let's say this now and make this clear, 9 months before the knucklehead leaves office:

George W. Bush created and, more importantly, LOST this war, that's the long and short of it. The next President, whoever that is, did not lose this war.

Say it again. Say it frequently. Make--and keep--this clear.

George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and anyone and everyone else who created or helped create this stupid, misrepresented, illegal war and incursion into Iraq are the ones who lost this war. The next person to pick up the mantel of President for the United States has to clean up the mess, yes, BUT THEY DID NOT LOSE THIS WAR.

It would be a gross, unjust miscarriage of justice to say or think that anyone else lost this war but "W" and his cabal. They went in against international law. They chose, arbitrarily and unjustly, wrongly, to go in. They chose to go in with too few soldiers and support. They chose to go in without a plan. They chose to go in without a plan for after the "liberation" and/or fall of Saddamm Hussein. They did all these things, themselves, all alone. Senators Clinton, McCain or Obama (or former Senator Gore), if they are the next President did none of this. It won't be theirs to lose, in any way and it's extremely important to call this out now--and again and again, through next January's inauguration and beyond. History needs to call out these important details and facts.

It would be a gross injustice to the next administration, to the American people and to history to have it labeled any other way than that it was a war--let me repeat again--that George W. Bush and his administration lost.

Meanwhile, this from Yahoo! and the Associated Press just now: "US GI's in Iraq Suffer Worst Week of '0". See it at this link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080412/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Why this war isn't truly even sustainable

Consider these major factors:

1) News today: "Soldiers deaths announced: The US military announced the deaths of 5 more soldiers, raising the number of US troop deaths to 17 since Sunday. The announcement came amid new fighting in a Shiite militia group stronghold under siege by US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad." From the Kansas City Star, today, April 10, 2008.

2) The "Green Zone", which is supposed to be our military's "safe haven", is by no means safe. Some of the above 17 fatalities came from attacks in this very Green Zone. Zbigniew Brzezinski once said, at the start of the war, that the Green Zone was the only thing in Iraq that we controlled. We really don't even control that, if we ever did.

3) More news today: "Soldier Suicide record: 'US soldiers committing suicide at record levels, young officers abandoning their military careers, and the heavy use of forces in Iraq has made it harder for the military to fight conflicts elsewhere', Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody said.'" If all this is true, and it most assuredly is, how can we continue this fight in Iraq indefinitely, let alone maintain our military worldwide? (Source: Kansas City Star, April 10, 2008).

4) Okay, quick, can you tell me how much this war has been figured to be costing us per month? From the very official and "nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers", it has been estimated to be $12 billion per month. That's twelve. Billion. A month. Our national debt, alone, can't support an endless funding of this very expensive, seemingly endless war. (Source: Go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11847236)

5) As of today, "the federal deficit through the first half of this budget year hit a record high of $311.4 billion, up 20.5% from a year ago. The Treasury's monthly budget report showed that revenue for the budget year that began Oct. 1 totaled $1.146 trillion, up 2.2% from last year. Government spending was up" (thanks, "conservative" President Bush!) by a much faster 5.7%, rising to $1.457 trillion." (Souce: Kansas City Star, April 11, 2008).

With this limited information alone--just these five points--what about this war seems supportable? We can't afford the military personnel. Too many of the military men and women don't want to be there. We can't afford the materiel to support our personnel--and this is not a recent development. We can't control much of anything in Iraq. No one wants us there from the outside. The American people don't any longer want us there/support the war, if we ever did. We can't afford it financially. And we've never held a high, moral ground with this war, in spite of what a few in the government said and what too many people believed.

How could it possibly be considered supportable, sustainable and/or defensible any longer?

Mr. President? Mr. McCain? Anybody?

Great quote from Friday night

Bill Maher, from his show this last weekend:

"and that is what's so great about the internet: it let's pompous blowhards get together with other pompous blowhards in a vast circle-jerk of pomposity."



Ow.


you gotta laugh.

"Hang on to your seats..."

"...it's going to be a bumpy ride."

Tomorrow's testimony by General David Petraeus before the Senate should be fascinating, for several reasons.

For starters, it's going to be interesting to see how he describes the situation in Iraq. Things don't sound too good over there but Senator McCain is saying how "golly-gosh terrific" it is and that, gee, it's just not that bad. Meanwhile, as I entered in the blog 2 days ago, Generals in the military are saying how frayed the soldiers are, since some of them are on their 2nd, 3rd or fourth tour of duty. Also, the "Green Zone" had casualties over the weekend, too.

Then there's the fact that all 3 candidates to be our next President are going to be there, asking questions--leading, in their own way, of course, no doubt. I can hear them now: "General, don't you think...?". Beauty.

Third, there's the fact that the testimony has to happen but that the Republicans really don't want to be there or go through with it, most likely, this being an election year and the whole war being such a huge mistake, in so many ways.

And that's just 3 of the factors.

Yeah, it's going to be pretty fascinating.

It's a good thing we're not cynical, eh?

Three big problems--and reasons why we must get out of Iraq

Problem/fact No. 1

Right this second, if someone asked you, could you give a rough estimate of the total national debt of the United States? I just gave it some thought and I sure couldn't.

Turns out, right now, it's just short of 9-1/2 Trillion dollars. The estimated population of the United States is 303,760,712 so each citizen's share of this debt is $31,084.98. The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$1.69 billion per day since September 29, 2006. (These statistics from the "US National Debt Clock" website: http://brillig.com/debt_clock/).

Problem/fact No. 2

Then there's the more serious loss of over 4,000 soldiers dying and thousands that have been injured, one way or another, it seems clear we can't go on the way we are in Iraq and the world.

Reading just now, I find that 3 more American soldiers died in Iraq today when the ultra-safe "Green Zone" we established for our troops was just hit with missiles. Thanks again, "W".

P/F No. 3

This weekend the The New York Times gave us the following--actually, more from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, read: the Pentagon. It seems that the Generals from the highest levels of our military are warning us all that our troops simply can't continue to be in Iraq and Afghanistan, tour of duty after tour of duty. It's just taking far too high a toll on our soldiers over there, mentally and physically.

Don't believe it? Here's a quote from General Richard Cody, the Army Vice Chief of Staff in comments to Congress last week: "Our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it." He goes on, "Lengthy and repeated deployments with insufficient recovery time have placed incredible stress on our soldiers and our families, testing the resolve of our all-volunteer force like never before."

Not enough for you? How's this: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and General George Casey, Jr., the Army Chief of staff and their deputies have "warned that the war in Iraq should not be permitted to inflict an unacceptable toll on the military as a whole", according to The Times.

So folks, if you think this can keep going on ad infinitum, think again. It can't. It doesn't matter if you and I go over and fight, it just can't go forward as is. We don't have the resources. This is what comes from not thinking before you act. (Wanna' bet this President NEVER played chess before, in his life, and actually THOUGHT AHEAD A FEW MOVES, before he made his play?)

"W" broke Iraq but "all the king's horses," you know?

So Senator McCain can say we need to keep this war going and Senators running for the Presidency can say we won't bail but for at least these 3 big problems and reasons, as I originally said, this can't keep going on. It just can't.

So let's take the politics and emotion out of the equation. Logic and facts tell anyone who examines the situation, we simply can't stay in Iraq. "W" blew it. He didn't plan. He didn't take all the details into account (like his Father did--see earlier entry, below) and so now, if you have to look at it this way, we have to "lose".

We simply have no other choice.

To all Americans

Be sure to see Doonesbury today:

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html


(another, new post later today, too).

George H. W. Bush: In sharp contrast to Junior

The first President Bush was no intellectual--and said as much--but give him credit for some smart things, like these two quotes, at minimum:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome."

"I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war."


But that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what happened, years later, with his knucklehead son and that is why we are still there now, why the first President Bush was right and why we are still expending soldiers and materiel to and in Iraq, half a world away.

The insanity.

If only Junior had consulted Senior.

McCain: sayin' the right thing

Okay, first things first.

Let me make it very clear that I am not a "McCain man". I am absolutely not, in any way for John McCain or for him for the Presidency of the United States in the year 2008. I never voted for him and never will. I did wish it were him instead of the current knucklehead we ended up with, precisely because I didn't think he'd be as bad for us as I thought W would be--and, apparently, I was more than just a little correct in that. I don't think he would have attacked another, foreign sovereign nation, which is so clearly, unalterably against international law. Also, he probably wouldn't have screwed us all up the way this, again, knucklehead has.

All that said, I will say that John McCain said the absolute right thing this week when he said he would not bail out any banks, construction firms or home buyers with government money. He said they made their mistakes and they'd have to live with them.

And you know? He's right.

The banks made lousy--possibly illegal--loans to home buyers and a whole bunch of greedy nincompoops signed off on what were just incredibly stupid home loans because they either believed they could afford them or they were told they could afford them, or both.

We shouldn't now bail them out and we shouldn't have to.

Senator McCain probably only said this to pander to the Conservatives in the party, I'm thinking, and he's only trying to simply prove how Conservative he REALLY is but, hey, he said it and, let me say it again, he was right.

Now, two things have or will have come out of this. First, because everyone's jumping all over him--mostly Democrats--he'll never say it again, which is too bad because--let me repeat--HE WAS RIGHT. Second, the Democrats have jumped all over this saying he's "Mr. Do-nothing" when it comes to the economy, which is nonsense and very close to a lie.

It's wrong and wrong-headed.

Look around. We have a pile of debt as a nation, and it's just getting bigger. Millions, billions and trillions larger. We can't afford to keep bailing out people who do the wrong thing anyway, in business. We just can't. We don't have the money anymore. We don't have that capability. And if we did, we still shouldn't. If your brother always got drunk and blew his paycheck and didn't take care of his family but gambled his money away, instead, would you forever throw money at his problems? No, you wouldn't. And you shouldn't, even if you could and the same applies here.

Now, connected to this bigger picture is the likelihood of a coming recession. Yes, I said the word: recession. (At the beginning of these things--which always come around, folks, I have news for you--people always freak out and only refer to it as "the 'R' word", like a) we've never done this before and b) it's the end of the world.)

I have news for you--we've lived through recessions before and we will again. And again. And again.

And we have to. It's called the business cycle, ladies and gentlemen, and they are a fact of life. They are a fact of the business world. If you don't have busts, you can't have booms. If you get very descriptive of them, you start sounding like Peter Sellers playing Chauncey in the movie "Being There", where you say things about there being a Winter, and then Spring comes along, with new growth.

BUT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS. And it's what needs to happen.

So when everyone starts talking about pumping money into the economy because, God forbid, we can't have a recession, I want to scream.

Let me say it again: WE NEED RECESSIONS. We need downturns so we clear out the crap. We need downturns so we later have upturns.

And for Hillary and Barack and any politician to say we have to pump money into the economy, I say bunk. More crap. We do not. We decidedly do not.

WE DON'T HAVE THE MONEY. We don't have the funds to keep pumping in. IT ISN'T THERE.

And secondly, WE NEED DOWNTURNS. Throwing money at this recession is a mistake.

I'm not saying "tough" when someone loses their job, no. Actually, what I'm saying is that people inevitably lose their jobs. They'll need to go out with their skills and get a new job, yes, either with what skill set they have or they'll have to get some more training. (News flash: we need LOTS more computer people! And nurses! and teachers! Maybe train there).

So, when I hear politicians pandering that there needs to be more money sent out or given to some group, I just want to say "No! Enough!". And someone needs to. Senator McCain did and he's being vilified for it and it's wrong. He's right.

I hope he has the conservative guts to stick with what he said.

I bet he doesn't.

Here we go again (2nd post in one day, too!)

Hud chief resigns amid criminal probe (don'tcha just love this Bush Administration?)

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, his tenure tarnished by allegations of political favoritism and a criminal investigation, announced his resignation Monday amid the wreckage of the national housing crisis.

He leaves behind a trail of unanswered questions about whether he tilted the Department of Housing and Urban Development toward Republican contractors and cronies.

The move comes at a shaky time for the economy, with soaring mortgage foreclosures imperiling the nation's credit markets.

In announcing that his last day at HUD will be April 18, Jackson said only, "There comes a time when one must attend more diligently to personal and family matters."

Some Congressional Democrats had pushed for him to leave.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said that while Jackson's resignation is "appropriate, it does nothing to address the Bush administration's wait-and-don't-see posture to our nation's housing crisis."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said HUD will be called on to work with Congress on assisting refinancing for borrowers faced with imminent foreclosure.

The ethical allegations against Jackson "meant that the Bush administration's ineffective housing policies were being burdened by an even more ineffective HUD Secretary," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said after Jackson's announcement.

President Bush called Jackson "a strong leader and a good man." Ties between the two men go back to the 1980s when they lived in the same Dallas neighborhood. It was Jackson's personal ties to Bush that brought him to Washington, where he displayed a forceful personal style at HUD for seven years, first as the agency's No. 2 official and since 2004 in the top slot.

Despite a strong commitment to housing for those in need, Jackson was capable of ill-advised public comments.

Last year, after the subprime mortgage crisis erupted, many policymakers underlined the disproportionate impact of the high-risk, high-cost mortgages on minorities and the elderly, who often are targets of predatory lending practices that lure people into loans they are incapable of repaying.

Asked about the problems with subprime mortgages last June, Jackson insisted that many such borrowers were not unsophisticated, low-income people but what he called "Yuppies, Buppies and Guppies" — well-educated, young, black and gay upwardly mobile achievers — with expensive cars who bought $400,000 homes with little or no money down.

In announcing his departure, Jackson said that in his time at HUD, "We have helped families keep their homes. We have transformed public housing. We have reduced chronic homelessness. And we have preserved affordable housing and increased minority homeownership."

Bush has been cool to the idea of a big federal housing rescue. "The temptation of Washington is to say that anything short of a massive government intervention in the housing market amounts to inaction," the president said recently. "I strongly disagree with that sentiment."

On Monday on his way out of the country for a trip built around a NATO summit, Bush said he wants Congress to modernize HUD's Federal Housing Administration, allowing more struggling homeowners to refinance their mortgages.

In October, the National Journal first reported on the criminal investigation of Jackson. The FBI has been examining the ties between Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by Jackson's department as a construction manager in New Orleans. Jackson's friend got the job after Jackson asked a staff member to pass along his name to the Housing Authority of New Orleans.

In another instance of alleged favoritism that came to light in February, the Philadelphia housing authority alleges that Jackson retaliated against the agency because it refused to award a vacant lot worth $2 million to soul-music producer-turned-community developer Kenny Gamble for redevelopment of a public housing complex.

Jackson's problems began in 2006, when he told a group of commercial real estate executives that he had revoked a contract because the applicant who thanked him said he did not like President Bush. Jackson later told investigators "I lied" when he made the remark about taking back the contract.

The probe of Jackson's comment by the HUD inspector general ended with no action taken against him, but the investigators brought to light friction between the HUD secretary and some contractors who have long done business with the agency, a number of them donors to Democrats. On Monday, the IG's office said it had seen Jackson's latest remarks and "there is nothing more that we can add."

In the IG probe, some of Jackson's own aides contradicted his account of one incident in which investigators found the HUD secretary had blocked a contract for several months to one heavily Democratic donor. Jackson blamed his aides for the delay in the award.

Jackson was the first black leader of the housing authority in Dallas, where his integration efforts caused clashes with some local homeowners in predominantly white neighborhoods.

___

Associated Press writers Marcy Gordon, Ben Feller, Hope Yen and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Understanding

There are a few things I will never understand.

The first is Blacks or African-Americans in the United States who would be Republican--or politically conservative, for that matter. The Republicans once again showed their true colors in the last year, when they put off, almost permanently, the reenactment of the Voting Rights Bill. They didn't want to renew it. Fortunately, too much public opinion was against them and they weren't great enough in number in Congress. What more evidence would you need, given all the rest that is available from this Party? When they ran candidates for President this year, 12 middle-aged and older rich white males stood up. That's it. It's the party of the rich. It's the party of the corporation. It's certainly not the party of the downtrodden, neglected, denied, discriminated or disadvantaged.

A secong thing I don't understand is any person of not great means becoming a Republican. I can see being Conservative, especially fiscally Conservative--wanting to keep government small and out of citizen's lives but that's it. The whole thing where a great deal of Democrats became "Reagan Republicans" will forever baffle me. This seems, clearly, as a way to understand it, as a way of being "in the in crowd" for fashion's sake, just to be part of the greater whole. If that's the case, it's sad. Really sad.

Another thing I don't understand is any gay, homosexual, lesbian or transgendered person who could possibly be a member of the Republican Party, unless they're just rich, selfish, stupid or self-hating. The Republicans, Conservatives and Christian right has made it extremely clear that they aren't just against this group--they hate them, make no mistake. The evidence is, again, overwhelming. Forget that there are at least 300 species in nature (God's creation, if you're so inclined) and that homosexuality in humans transcends humankind down through time. These people think it's a new, degenerate choice that is against all that is right and good and they'll have nothing of it. And a gay person wants to be a part of that? Are you kidding me?

Another? Churches in the last decade getting "in bed" and colluding with the Republican Party doesn't make any sense. Sure, they've gotten their "faith-based initiatives" nonsense--and then got stabbed in the back by this current White House, from the "back room". The Republican Party and Big Business have so totally used these people and groups for their own big money uses, purely and simply. It was a smarter, more noble world, when the part of the Bible about a wealthy man having the chance of going to heaven, like that of a camel going through the eye of a needle, paraphrased. Where did that go? That's been completely, totally, almost irrevocably lost and no one remembers or laments it--but me, it would seem.

The last thing I don't understand is any Jew wanting to be a Nazi. Oh, yeah, but that never happens.

Fascinating new developments

Fascinating. Really. Are you watching this?

News just out this morning: The Fed is extending 100 more billion dollars to the banks come April, to "combat the effects of a credit crisis." You can see the whole article on Yahoo here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080328/ap_on_bi_ge/fed_credit_crisis

First, of course, is the figure of an additional 100 billion dollars, for its sheer size. But there's much more to it than that.

With all these "fixes", most all of them by the Fed, though one of them, at least, proposed months ago by the private banks, is the fact that these huge amounts of money have to be extended, repeatedly, by the bank to the banks. It's extremely large, let's not pretend otherwise.

What that tells us is that the problems are extremely large, naturally. But, at the same time, I think the Fed and the media, both, are doing a magnificent job of not panicking or suggesting that you and I, the average "Joe" on the street, should be concerned in any way.

Let me say again, fascinating.

They need the situations handled and looked after, of course, but the last thing they want to do is create a "panic for the exits". This is a pretty fantastic balancing act. And since the man on the street isn't really paying attention--yet, anyway--it's been successful. If they can just keep up the preemptive solutions--without breaking the national bank--but also keep people from worrying or over-reacting too much or getting emotional or, worst, getting irrational, then they can bring this broken plane in for a landing.

God, I hope it's a soft one.

Back to more important things

Time magazine has two terrific articles out just now. One is by a soldier in Iraq, about the meaning of 4,000 soldiers dead due to the Iraq war. It's very poignant. You can find it at the following link:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1725642,00.html

And the other, second article quotes Senator and Presidential Candidate John McCain as saying we need to "collaborate more with allies." You'll find it here:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1725541,00.html

I'm more moved by the first, soldier's article, of course, but find this second one fascinating, too, because, if you'll recall, Senator John Kerry was "shot down", forgive the image, 4 years ago when he was running for President for saying just this. "Too wimpy" it was said. Too soft.

How far we've come. Now we think, after all this time and all the soldier's deaths and all the billions of dollars and materiel we've wasted--along with blowing up and destroying a country, only to have to put it back together--when we finally come back around to realizing that maybe talking with our allies was a good idea after all.

And not wimpy.

Watching PBS' "Frontline" series Monday and Tuesday night should have been required for all American citizens this week so we could all know where this Iraq war came from, what it's done and who's been responsible for what, including the lies and misrepresentations.

Careful what you wish for...

At 51 years, I'd not yet ridden on a train. The older I got, the more I made sure to announce this, at the appropriate time (I'm sure), should the topic come up.

Like seeing Paris (not) or travelling Europe, I thought it something important I should absolutely do. And the sooner, the better. It had to be fun and wonderful and thoroughly romantic and exciting. Right?

I should have given it more logical thought.

Being trapped on just a few train cars with Americans, alone, should have given me obvious pause. Far too obvious. And then stuck with them for hours? Waaaayyyy too obvious. With nowhere else to go? No escaping loud, boisterous people? What a fool I was.

The thing about being on a train in America today is that, for the period of time they are on these cars, the space becomes their living room--and we're all along for the ride. Everyone else is just a strange visitor that they can--and do--ignore. Want to take off your shoes? Go ahead! Little one want to run up and down the aisle the whole trip? No problem! Want to stop him? Certainly not his parents!

Is it just me or are we all raised, young, in one era so you grow up with those earlier, stricter rules, standards and expectations, only to assume the world will live up to them later in that same life? I think it's universal but, unless we're careful, we forget that that much earlier time--and its rules--are long gone. It's no wonder people want to stay home more, the older they get. Sure, there are the physical aches and pains of travel as you age that might make you want to stay home--and then there's missing your own bed--and the peace and quiet of home. But more than anything, I think, there is the over-arching desire to not have to put up with the rest of the world's noise and needs (read: crap). We get convinced we're right and that we understand the world and, finally, that the rest of humanity is wrong, misguided, loud and obnoxious.

It gets frustrating.

It can get maddening.

And then there's the fact that the trains are run by the US government. Yi. They are poorly run, for sure. They are dirty--inside and out. They are late. They are wildly inconsistent. One conductor runs the train his way. Another, completely his own and they don't have anything in common, for instance.

So, then, we are forced to be what we don't want to be. Forced to have what we either don't have or don't want to have--that is, patient and patience.

It reminds me of an old cartoon I saw years ago. Two vultures are seen sitting in a tree. One turns to the other and says "Patience my ass. I'm gonna' kill something."

That said, I did have a good time on the trip. Can you believe it? I just don't want to go by train in the United States again.

Now, the Orient Express--that's a different matter entirely.

From Michael, yesterday

I was reading tonight a website about the economic crisis. There was a statistic that helped me to realize how something like a crisis in home mortgages could trigger this whole economic crisis. Wrap your mind around this statistic: "Sonoma County borrowers pulled $8.3 billion out of their homes over the past five years, taking out more than 162,000 equity lines, according to estimates by Moody's Economy.com."

Read that again. In just one county in California, ONE COUNTY! 8.3 billion dollars in home equity loans. And these aren't even mortgages, just home equity loans!!! So how much in all of California? I don't know, but one can extrapolate. Granted Sonoma County is a wealthy county just north of San Francisco, but think how many hundreds of billion of dollars in home equity loans must have been taken out in California in the past five years. And they're going bad! In addition to the subprime mortgages, liar loans, interest only loans, etc. You're starting to talk serious money. This statistic about one county helped me to understand how much money is involved and why it is taking down these financial giants.

Where did THAT come from?

Okay, it's history in the minds of most Americans now, if they noticed at all, but at the end of the week, if you were paying attention, you saw where, seemingly all of a sudden to us, the man on the street, Bear/Stearns, the huge New York investment bank all of a sudden had what was described--seemingly accurately--as a "depression-era style" run on the bank.

Holy cow.

Who saw that coming?

I heard it had been rumored for a while but if it was, it must have only been in the halls of financial institutions.

This is HUGE.

Who knew they were not only in trouble but BIG trouble? Sure the Fed and JP Morgan have stepped in and sort of cleaned up the mess but this creates big questions to be answered.

For one, how much is this gonna cost you and me, to clean up? How many millions of tax dollars are going to be needed to make this go away? Any? Lots? Not many? What? How much?

And for the much bigger picture, since we have heard rumors--many more, and bigger, but somewhat similar rumors--about Citibank being in either the same or worse trouble: is Citibank next? If not, why not? Can we be sure of that? And if so, why? Why would they be in good shape when we've heard differently out here and when Bear-Stearns--and others--have been or are in trouble? What can we believe? What do we know? What do we not know? What do we need to know? And we want--and need--to know it all and FAST, thank you.

And so, that begs more of the same questions about virtually all other financial institutions in the United States. Who's in trouble? Who isn't? What needs to be done? What's going to be done? Is anyone driving this bus?

And that seems to be the question I'm personally left with, time and again. That is, who's driving this bus? Who's in control? What are they doing? What are they going to do? Where are we going?

This comes straight out of this financial/subprime loans/financial institutions mess but can also be directly related to our situation in Iraq, don't you think? We know how we got here, of that we're sure. But, given that, where are we now? And, more importantly, what do we do now? How long are we going to be in Iraq? What's the plan? Is there a plan? I get the feeling that there isn't one. I get the feeling the press doesn't think there's a plan. I get the feeling that most of America doesn't think there's a good, intelligent, viable, affordable plan.

We all agree we can't go on sending American Troops overseas forever, even if we think they should have been sent there in the first place (which is pretty unbelievable to me, personally, but that's my opinion, though, God knows I'm anything but alone).

We also, I think, agree, as a country, that we shouldn't be putting money and materiel into the Middle East forever.

Did I say shouldn't? Hell, can't. We CAN'T keep putting our money into Iraq interminably. That makes no sense at all. There's too many things we can't afford already.

So, that said, we don't have a plan, right? We agree on that?

Well, for the further, last step, let's ask who's asking the questions? Who's asking what our plan is? Congress? Nope, I don't think so. It's an election year. They're busy or afraid to stir up any mess or both.

The media? Are they asking what the plan is? Again, a resounding no. They're asking whether Geraldine Ferraro is a racist. You know, the important questions. They're focused on the election of the next President (sort of). They can't be bothered.

So I say let's start asking the big questions, folks. Let's ask. Let's ask what we're doing in Iraq RIGHT NOW and what are we going to do in the future? Where are we headed? Oh, and how about "what makes sense for the country and the world?", while we're at it.

Surely someone out there has some ideas. And, God willing, answers.

Sobering thoughts to start the weekend

It just keeps gettnig better and better, doesn't it? (Read: worse and worse).

I had heard all the data and statistics already so I knew this stuff was out but still, it's pretty sobering, what the media reported today.

For one, there were "record" job cuts of 63,000 people from businesses last month. Yow. That hurt. (Frankly, I wish the media wouldn't even call it a "record job cut"--just say 63,000 people lost their jobs and don't put a headline on it. Not that it's the media's fault, don't misunderstand).

And two, Warren Buffett is now the top billionaire in the world, according to Forbe's Magazine.



No, I really am using that as levity. That is NOT the second-most important business article of the day. The information behind that headline is, though. Check this out:

In 2006, half of the top 20 billionaires in the world on Forbes Magazine's list were Americans.

Got that? Half. Fifty-percent.

Last year? One year later?


4


(Yes, that's f-o-u-r).


Another yow.

My reason is pointing this out is, yes, obvious on the face of it. Sure, fewer Americans are in the top 20 billionaires.

So what, right?

This isn't a "pity party", as my brother would say. And certainly not a sympathy gathering for the uber-wealthy.

My point is, the money is flowing OUT of the country and INTO others. Google "Dubai" if you haven't already. That's one of the biggest. Do a search for Exxon-Mobil's profits for the last 2 years. That's another. Check out China's growth for the last several years. You know where to look.

It ain't pretty, folks.

If it's hurting the uber-wealthy, it's gonna' really hurt those of us down here, eh?

And we've just started.

This is the top of the roller-coaster, I think, where you take that first, big, comforting deep breath. And then...





(I'd be happy to be--and hope I am--wrong).

A Sign Of The Times

This comes from http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Professor Depew is writing The Wrong Company for the Wrong Times.

There are perhaps few companies more directly associated with positive social mood and the long-running bull market than Sharper Image (SHRP). Yesterday the company filed for bankruptcy protection, citing declining sales and profitability.

With more than 180 retail stores, half of which the company will close, it would be easy to dismiss the company's descent into bankruptcy as simply another case of a company failing to adapt to a shifting retail environment fueled by changing consumer shopping behavior and online sales functionality; a sign of the times. Indeed, it may yet be a "sign of the times," but what sign, and of which times?

Sharper Image was born in San Francisco in 1977 as a catalog company selling jogging watches. Within 10 years the company emerged as a publicly traded pioneer in catalog shopping.

Now there is a good chance the company will forever rest beneath a granite-engraved epitaph portraying it as an iconic retailer of nothing but bull market frivolity; automatic massage chairs, vacuuming robots, turbo-charged nosehair trimmers, digital breath alcohol analyzers, whatever you don't need, whenever you don't need it, at prices you couldn't care less about because, hey, if you need to ask how much an electric peppermill that you don't need or want costs, you probably can't afford it anyway.

Sharper Image stores and products have always been busy, frenetic, mirroring a busy and frenetic social experience and the happy optimism of a bright social mood. Of course we need turbo-charged nosehair trimmers; or more precisely, of course we want turbo-charged nosehair trimmers. They're nosehair trimmers. And they're turbo.

Unfortunately, those days of consumer gadget frivolity are quickly fading, a victim of darkening social mood; confusion, lack of control and insecurity force changes in our perceptions that manifest externally as spacial reductions, limitations, the stripping away of clutter and excess that feels heavy, like a weight, like debt.

The new Sharper Image, the right company for the right time, would likely be a company devoted to a single product sold with a minimalist aesthetic via an old-fashioned medium, like, perhaps a company that sells jogging watches through magazine ads. Sounds familiar.

As I stare in amazement at products like the JumpSnap Ropeless Jump Rope I am wondering, How the heck did I ever get along without that? But somehow, as social moods have changed, it's no longer cool to be sharp.

Professor Depew had this take on sharper images and social mood:

One of the oft-discussed themes here in the 'Ville is the change in social moods the unwinding of our debt-based economy is likely to cause. Indeed, consumers' refusal to purchase ropeless jump ropes and other superfluous, overpriced gadgets shows this shift is already occurring.

What 8 years of "W" has given us, so far

'cuz someone needs to keep track:

1) The largest debt in the history of the republic

2) The highest petroleum prices in the history of the republic (we should have KNOWN to buy oil stocks in 2000!)

3) The lowest value of the dollar in the history of our union

4) The largest profits for any corporation in the history of the nation, and that by an oil company, 2 years successively--Exxon-Mobil (I'll be kicking myself for years for not buying oil stocks!)

5) An arbitrary war that is costing us American lives

6) The same arbitrary war that was AGAINST INTERNATIONAL LAW, since we attacked another sovereign nation (why isn't this emphasized?)

7) No end in sight for this same costly war--and costly in terms of lives, first, and money and materiel second

8) A horribly divided nation because he--W--and his ilk pits "us" vs. "them" in all aspects of his career (with such little imagination, it's always "us vs. them", black vs. white, good vs. evil, Republicans vs. Democrats, Conservatives vs. Liberals, "believers" vs. non-believers, America vs. everyone not "with" us, etc.)

9) A government that is, clearly, pitted against the little guy--against the "man on the street" and solidly, four-square for the corporations and the moneyed. I didn't think I'd ever see that. Not this blatant.

10) Tax relief that has been shown to be for the wealthy amidst all this war and debt (really, there is just no shame).

11) An Environmental Protection Agency that doesn't protect the environment--or the nation's citizens--but corporations, instead

12) A Consumer Product Safety Commission that also doesn't protect consumers but--again--protects corporations and their possible profits, instead.

There's more he's done to us--done to our country--but these are the most egregious. We'll be paying for this clown for decades to come.

I can hardly wait until January 19 of next year. In these last months, we have to be aware of what he'll try to get passed in Congress, to further benefit large corporations and, consequently, hurting "the little guy".

Heaven help us.

Lessons on a Monday in February

Lesson one:

Societies shouldn't have mechanisms created that take large amounts of money and transfer them to people of formerly extremely small means. Put another way, it is nearly crazy for a society to have a lottery in which middle class or lower middle class people can win millions of dollars.

It's a mistake virtually always.

It doesn't make sense.

It's a mistake looking to happen.

Wanna' have a terrific documentary? Rush to Georgia right now and start filming the family who just won 270 million dollars in the "Mega-Millions" lottery. It'll be a runaway success. This has tragedy written all over it (unless this family is extremely lucky--or smart).

Lesson number 2: World leaders should NOT hand uncompeted contracts worth large sums of money (read: millions of dollars--again) to friends, colleagues or associates. (See "Day 2" below).

I was right. The contract given to former Attorney General John Ashcroft for between 27 and 52 million dollars, according to the Associated Press, was not competed by the government--yours and mine--that gave it to him.

I wish I had been wrong.

Day of rest

Okay, it's the first Sunday of "the blog" and a couple things come to mind.

First, why don't people remember this part of the Bible:

Mat 6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

And if they did, why would they need so many bloody federal and state laws, declaring their need to pray in public? Some knucklehead here in Missouri just wasted the time of the legislators and so, the tax paying public, passing a law for just such nonsense.

Just wait, in a few years there will be Muslims and other religions, demanding the right to this prayer in public and people will be climbing off this little pedestal really quickly.

Then, two, this next one:

Mat 6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen [do]: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

This one always makes me think the Catholics took this right out of their book. There's NO WAY this could be in their bible. Holy cow, week after week those people say the same things. They show up, do their sitting, kneeling and standing, say the same prayers and punch out. All that matters is that they show up and go through the motions. (I should know, I was raised in this group).

I've come to think that Catholics, of all the religions, did heaven, hell, fund-raising and church attendance best, from a business standpoint. It's perfect. If you have rules, threatening members of the church with hell, for pity's sake, if they don't attend--right there, you've got great attendance. Those people HAVE to show, every week. That, in turn, is good for the collection plate. It's church-sanctioned extortion, plain and simple. And it's blessed by what's supposed to be the most sacred institutions in the world: your very own religion and government.

I tell you, it's the perfect business. You almost have no product at all and you've got people giving you money. How else do you build a place as big and beautiful as the Vatican?

Want a good read on religion? Get Robert N. Minor, Ph.D.'s book: "When Religion is an Addiction". Search for it at Target's website. Amazon.com has it, too, of course.

On a last, more immediate, completely different topic: Note that today it was 88 degrees in San Antonio, Texas, ladies and gentlemen and they call for the same tomorrow. This on February 24. That is extremely early for this warm a temperature, I can tell you. And they've had very little rain for the last 5 months. Global warming or no, that's not a good harbinger for the coming Spring and Summer. Food for thought.

Let's have a good week, campers.

Hey!

It's a new day. It's the weekend. Yay! (trying not to be shallow).

And I missed a post. Yesterday was busy.

So, great news! I've been trying to put something more positive out here--something not so heavily political and yesterday I found it. Eureka!

Did you see where a "huge" solar plant--according to the AP article I saw--is planned out in Arizona? I tell you, that's good news. We, as people in the United States separately, but also everyone else on the planet, too, need to see and understand that solar power is a way to get us out of all the biggest messes on this little planet. I mean this.

If we do more solar, even this way, with big solar power plants, but particularly if we developed more, better and cheaper photo-voltaic cells (so we could put them on our houses and office buildings) then 1) we wouldn't have to stay in the Middle East, where all the ignorant, centuries-old religious battles are still going on and 2) we would have FAR less pollution. And aren't those our largest problems on the planet? It seems as though they are. A third benefit would be the reduced likelihood of contributing to carbon dioxide output. (Did you notice I avoided saying "global warming"?).

Anyway, I see this as very welcome news, especially now, at the end of winter, when we're so cold-weather/gray skies intolerant. We need some encouragement.

Can you imagine NOT needing an electric company's power plant/pollution/bill in the mail? Wouldn't that be nice? No need for radioactive waste, either from using nukular power (thanks, Mr. President). That would be possible if we create those cheaper, more available photo-voltaic cells. It would help the US's security in so many ways, if we create them, rather than letting the Japanese or Chinese get on this first.

But first we have to get this knuclehead out of the White House.

Oh,well.

More fun for us today:

Check out these websites.

The first on the hypocrisy of Senator John McCain:

http://bravenewfilms.org/watch/18252086/30016 (Thanks again, Bryce!)

The second, a terrific, tongue firmly planted in cheek riff on the "Christian gene":

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qCzbNkyXO50&feature=related

(and thanks, Bob, for this one).

The next one is WAY overdue. It's a clarification for 94.3% of Americans (you know how geographically-challenged we are, right?):

http://www.kansascityisinmissouri.com/

(Thanks, Michael!)

And finally, if you missed Dilbert today, you should go see it. It's a hoot and shouldn't be missed.

http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/


Yeah, great stuff for the weekend! Get out there and have a good time!