Fascinating ad

There was a fascinating--to me--full-page ad in The New York Times yesterday from The Cato Institure and some 126 different doctors and scientists, as represented, disagreeing with then-President-Elect Barack Obama's quote from the election last year.

That quote, from November 19, was that "Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change." He went on to say "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear."

The scientists and doctors response: "With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true."

So, okay, climate change or global warming may or may not be a scientific fact.

You know what? I can live with that.

But do you know what else?

It doesn't matter.

What does matter is that polluting the only planet we have to live on is wrong. It's dumb. It's virtually suicidal.

If you see what corporations, in particular, have done to our water, air and land, in even their mild cases, it will show that the way we have lived in the last 100 years isn't sustainable.

--We don't have unlimited electrical power from our power plants

--We don't have enough room for our waste

--We can't go on soiling our air and land and water and still have clean air to breathe, water to drink and soil to grow plants and crops

--We can't go on coaxing our soil with pesticides and have problem-free crops to eat or water without those pesticides. (This doesn't even mention the bees we need).

So the way we've lived isn't sustainable. We need to change. We need to pollute less. We need to develop clean, sustainable, supportable solar energy and good, mercury-free batteries to store the power.

And we need to get busy doing it, climate change or no.

Link to the original ad:
http://www.cato.org/special/climatechange/cato_climate.pdf

Say it isn't so, Kathleen!

Well, this is just perfect.

This must mean that former Governor Kathleen Sebelius is absolutely qualified--perfect, really--to be in the Obama Administration.

I've been a HUGE Kathleen Sebelius supporter from right next door here, in Missouri (to her Kansas).

But I never thought I'd see in the media she owed back taxes she hadn't taken care of.

Sure, far stranger things have happened in Washington and politics but I thought she was far above this.

What a letdown.

Not having paid back taxes seems to be a requirement for service in this administration.

This sets to rest any concerns these people were going to be perfect, huh?

And this was on top of her voting for, in the last week, fetal sonograms for mothers, just before any possible abortion procedure. She clearly did this so she'd more easily be voted for her position as head of Health and Human Services.

It should be all uphill, once she's voted in.

I hope.


Link to story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090331/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/sebelius_taxes

Again and again and again

So a few days ago some gun-nut nutjob goes into a nursing home in North Carolina and starts shooting away, killing 8 people.

Again.

Some more.

Can you imagine what a nightmare that was?

Earlier today, a woman was told their McDonald's wasn't serving breakfast yet in Salt Lake City so one of two men got in the trunk for a sawed-off shotgun and gave the window a blast or two.

Now, in spite of more of this kind of evidence, some right-wing Republican nutjob down in Texas, one Representative Joe Driver wants to pass a law allowing guns on Texas campuses.

Sheesh.

We'll never learn.

Ironically, if you'll remember, it was in Texas at the University of Texas in 1966 that a guy went to the top of the University Tower to shoot and kill 16 people and wound dozens more.

But lets have guns on campuses.

Like more guns will solve anything.


Link to original stories here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/us/30shooting.html?scp=1&sq=8%20people%20are%20killed&st=cse

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20090330/49d051d0_3421_1334520090330-1509096128

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/us/30texas.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Texas%20considers%20allowing%20guns%20on%20campus&st=cse

A proud day for America

So our new, young, intelligent and eloquent, African-American (Black) President Obama and his energetic, intelligent and, yes, beautiful wife leave today for Europe and their first big international trip, for the G20 Summit.

It is, truly, a proud day for America, even before anything good happens.

About that Secretary of the Treasury

Have you seen any interviews with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner yet?

I have.

I have to say, too, he is just not impressive.

Maybe it's the format or something else but he doesn't come across as brilliant, by a long shot.

He isn't forceful.

He doesn't explain, for instance, this weekend when asked, why, exactly, the United States needs to save the auto industry. He just kept repeating that the auto industry is in the country's "vital interests".

Don't get me wrong, here. That is, actually, my point of view--that the American auto industry is, truly, in our country's vital interest--but if someone asks you "why?", you need to say more than just that it is. This is particularly true if you're Secretary of Treasury, defending the administration's moves and intentions.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope Timothy Geithner is a really bright, forceful guy with great ideas.

If he is, it isn't coming across the TV set. To me, he looks perpetually either scared or apologetic or both.

Here's hoping for the best.

Link to Treasury Secretary Geithner on, of all things, "Faux" news:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRSRHavGLOM

Almost enough to make you positive, eh?

I received a business email today, pointing out the following:

·Retail sales are ticking upward ("ticking upward"?)

·Existing home sales are up 5.1 percent in the latest survey (definitely good)

·Durable goods orders are up more than 3 percent (again, good)

·Most major banks have shown a profit so far in 2009 (and many are turning down or returning stimulus money)

·The stock market staged its biggest rally since 1974 this month (after being cut in half, that isn't saying a whole lot but hey, it's positive)

·Both the fed and treasury have implemented plans that are forecast to have a positive impact (this is the weakest point of all, because what are they going to say? Something bad?)

·Corporate earnings have been surprisingly strong for a change (again, good)

Hopefully it's part of a larger trend of good, slow growth... and we can stop throwing trillions of dollars at bankers and investment companies.

The auto industry?

So we're tough on the auto industry and we get the head of GM--Rick Wagoner--to quit but how about the much larger banking and investment industry?

How about them?

The guys who "screwed the pooch" on banking, home mortgages, investments, stocks, almost everything, to the tune of trillions of dollars--where are they?

Why, they're still running those very same industries, of course.

Sure, we'll beat up on the much smaller and weaker car companies but when it comes to investment banking, why isn't the government tough on them?

AIG alone has cost us about 200 billion dollars, to support them.

Any talk on revamping how they work? How about shrinking that company a bit so it's not "too big to fail" for the country?

What? No word?

I thought not.

It's like in elementary school when two or three bullies would beat up on one weak one.

Link to story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/30auto.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Our spending total

According to the McGlaughlin Group this evening and the figures they show, the United States' total taxpayer outlays since March 2008 for the financial crisis we're in is 5.32 trillion dollars.

Holy cow, people.

All of a sudden, we're talking about a ton of money.

Are we sure this isn't going to cause inflation?

LBJ's deficit spending for the Vietnam War sure did.

What we should--and shouldn't--do

Yesterday I wrote that the United States should outlaw hedge funds, short selling and other tricks on Wall Street.

I think this fits with the many people who also think that throwing billions and trillions of taxpayer, government money--that we have to borrow, mind you--is a bad idea.

Google Mish Sedlock, for one and Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist as two of them.

Fiscally conservative Republicans and some Democrats, alike, are thinking too much is too much, period.

Mr. Krugman's article in The New York Times puts this very cooly and logically into perspective today. You shouldn't miss it.

Link to the column here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/opinion/27krugman.html?th&emc=th

US to borrow from China for World Expo?

Further proof of the US' reduced place in the world now:

We may have to borrow money from the Chinese so we can have a presence at the 2010 World Expo.

And get this--for real irony, it's in Shanghai, China.

Yow. That's good.

So naturally the Chinese want us there.

But at what cost?

It's a little over a year away and we're barely pushing ground for our building.

How embarrassing for the world's superpower, eh?

Wait.

Superpower?


Link to original story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102432591&ft=1&f=1001

*original entry changed after note from writer, below

Remember my oil "buy" recommendation?

I wrote on March 23 that we should have bought oil (and Halliburton) stocks BIG TIME if we were cynical and greedy, at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, in 2000.

Of course I was right. (not assuming I always am, to be sure).

Well, here we are--an article in The New York Times today, saying that there are rising fears of an oil shock, since oil companies have reduced the number of refineries they have, due to the collapse in the price of oil.

You wouldn't think the oil companies would have reacted that far-reaching in this little bit of time but don't forget, it benefits the oil companies--all of them, world-wide--to reduce capacity as much as they can, again and again, over time. The less they can refine, boys and girls, the higher a price per barrel they can get for their precious commodity.

For stability in the United States and for the safety of both our residents, our homes and businesses, we should nationalize the oil companies and as soon as possible.

We never will, mind you. I know that.

As I've written before, we worship profit and profits and wealthy people and big wealth far too much to do what's right for the country.

We should nationalize Big Oil because they're going to do what's right for them--which is reduce capability and wring all they can out of a barrel of oil, in terms of price--and that goes in the face of what is right and good and sustainable for the country.

Screwing us is good business for Big Oil.

Buy oil stocks, folks.

It'll be good for you and your pocketbook, just not the country.


Link to original article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/energy-environment/27oil.html?th&emc=th

Some simple solutions

There is an article in The New York Times today, pointing out that the people of a small town in Italy--Lecco, to be specific--have decided to fight obesity in their children, along with automobile traffic and global warming (I would add pollution) by having their children walk to school.

Now, mind you, it's not a solution most American communities could easily adopt but it proves a different point to me.

It reinforces what I said here, some time ago, about our oil/Middle East/Middle East war/pollution/climate change problems, all with one really big push.

That is, if we switch as quickly as possible to solar electricity for our homes, businesses and cars, we could do the following:

1) Get out of the Middle East

2) Stop polluting our country and the world

3) Reduce climate change and global warming and the resultant ill effects those cause

4) Stop the transfer of wealth from us and our country to the Middle East

5) Add stability to the world's socio-economic structure

6) Add stability to the world's political structures

That's a lot right there.

It's what we need to do.

It won't be easy--or cheap--but it's rather simple.

And obvious.

Link to article in NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/europe/27bus.html?ref=world

Open for questions my butt

So I saw an article on Yahoo! News just now, telling how President Obama and his administration is taking questions from the American people about the economy and our situation so we can all participate.

And I'm thinking, yeah, I've got some questions for you--like are you going to make hedge funds and credit default swaps and short-selling on the stock markets illegal and disallow them the way you should so we clean up the current mess we're in and avoid these in the future, right?

So I go to the site, register and can't find how I put in a question. Then, quickly, I find out how and also, simultaneously find that THEY'RE NOT TAKING ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS.

Hey, thanks for that.

I really feel like part of the process.

That was a real coup for you in terms of PR.

Great job.

Not.

Link to the Yahoo!News story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obama_online

Here's the White House link:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/openforquestions/

What should happen

Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner is to go before Congress today, to say what the Administration would like to have happen for and to our financial system, so we can avoid the kinds of problems we have now, in the future.

Following is a short list of what he should be asking and pressing for, at minimum:

1) The outlawing of hedge funds since they just put bets upon bets and run up stock markets artificially;

2) The outlawing of short selling, for the same reasons as above;

3) The making illegal of "credit swaps" since they're a ridiculous lie of a term--a sham, really--meant to be a replacement for actual insurance and all their necessary financial supports;

4) The inability for corporations to buy too many competitors, so they don't become a threat to our country and financial system, the way AIG did and get to be "too big to fail". We knew this from the Great Depression but we let it happen anyway. Hey, what was Congress supposed to do, walk away from lobbyist's money and do the right thing for the country?

These are four easy, intelligent, simple things that should absolutely happen to both help clean up our current mess and to avoid similar problems to our current ones, now.

Sadly, again, ridiculously and even irresponsibly, it won't happen.

Congress hasn't the backbone to do any of this and lobbyists and corporations are too far into our representative's collective financial pockets to do these, right things. There will be huffing and puffing but in the end, what really needs to happen, won't.

Link to story on today's testimony:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090326/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/financial_regulation

Outrage?

So a letter of resignation was sent on yesterday by one Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G. and is also printed in The New York Times today on the op/ed page.

It seems Mr. DeSantis is outraged (outraged!) that he has to give up his nearly $750,000.00 bonus through AIG because it came from the American taxpayers and our tax money.

Well bully for him.

He may even be right to be outraged because Chief Executive Liddy and all the rest of the bosses lead them down the wrong path, sure.

But the fact is, this is the ugly situation--AIG is bankrupt and the American taxpayer was getting screwed for all these billions of dollars. Unfortunately, he and a lot of others aren't getting what was promised them.

But you know what? There's a whole lot of wrong things happening and handing out these millions to the AIG staff doesn't make it right.

And if Mr. DeSantis can afford, as he obviously can, to give away the rest of this, he must not be doing badly himself.

Welcome to the real and ugly world, Mr. DeSantis.

Maybe someone at AIG should have stood up to the people in charge at AIG a long time ago.

Maybe then we wouldn't all be getting the big screw right now.


Link to full story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Where now?

The Dow is up some more, along with other relatively good news about and on the economy, at least here in the United States. (European markets took a hit, however. Hopefully they're not more realistic than us in the States). Home sales were shown to be up last month in news reports yesterday, too.

So maybe now we can and should consider cutting back on the billions and trillions we were originally going to throw at Wall Street.

Sounds like a good idea.




Link to original story:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wall-St-jumps-on-signs-rb-14740995.html

Nice change of pace

I'm always pleasantly surprised when I read or am exposed to a column by Geoge Will and find that he and I agree on a subject.

Such was the case a week ago this past Saturday when he wrote of Americans, our diets and our exposure to corn, corn subsidies, corn syrup, meat in our diets and obesity in the United States. Even the title screamed agreement to me: "BAD HEALTH BUILT INTO OUR CORN-FED FOOD SYSTEM". (The capitalization was theirs).

He gave some terrific history about us, I think. For instance, he quotes Michael Pollan (no pun intended), author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and in Defense of Food. Mr. Pollan, he writes, "says that after World War II, the government had a surplus of ammonium nitrate, an ingredient of explosives--and fertilizer. Furthermore, pesticides could be made from ingredients of poison gases. Since 1945, the food supply has increased fster than America's population--faster even than Americans can increase their feasting."

Seriously, fascinating stuff.

People either don't know why we're so dang fat or they wonder why we are. The fact is, it has a great deal to do with farms, farming and corporations.

President Eisenhower warned us, for sure.

More:

--Did you know three in five Americans are overweight?

--one in five os us are out and out obese?

"Dureing World War II, when meat, dairy products and sugar were scarce, heart disease plummeted. It rebounded when ratioinng ended."

That's pretty incdredible right there.

"When you adjust for age...rates of chronic diseases like cancer and type 2 diabetes are considerably higher today than they were in 1900."

Yow. That's pretty indicting stuff.

My sister has been claiming for years, along with others, that if we ate better and smarter, we wouldn't have to pay millions and billions of dollars to treat and try to cure cancer. She's not alone, by a long shot. There are medical people who have been claiming this for years, too. It seems the data makes this clear and not really debatable, doesn't it?

Still more from Mr. Will's column: "Four of the top causes of American deaths--coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer--'have well-established links' to diet, particularly through the superabundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat,' Pollan says."

So why put this down now?

First, because Mr. Will wrote of it just this past week.

Second, to spread the information.

And third and finally, because I am, just now going to board a cruise ship out of Miami and if I've heard anything about cruising, it's that there is mass quantities of food, all over the ship, virtually non-stop.

This gives me more desire to tone it all down, in the first place, and maybe evaluate the consumption, casually, while I'm enjoying myself.

Bon appetit'.

Observations from a vacation

Literally, observations from a vacation:

--It seems like lots of young women in America--more than used to be--are reading pulpy, fashion and celebrity magazines and it surprised me;

--the Fort Lauderdale International Airport is a nightmare to go through on Sundays, when cruise ships are dumping off their recent passengers;

--the Chicago and St. Louis International Airports are greedy business pigs as they charge for internet access;

--the Fort Lauderdale and Kansas City International Airports don't charge for internet access;

--I have more respect now, for the Kansas City International Airport, after going through Fort Lauderdale's;

--there is no way the Kansas City International Airport should be leveled, in the future, to make way for some other, newer airport. It makes no sense. It couldn't possibly improve the facility and it would certainly not be a "green", sustainable act (tearing it down and replacing it);

--It seems as though some national law was passed in the recent years, requiring young men to wear their baseball caps backward, in spite of otherwise outward good looks and taste;

--I would think the Chili's restaurant chain would either want a better image for themselves, with their "Chili's on the Go" chains or that they'd be ashamed of themselves, given the really awful food they just barely served today at extraordinary high prices in their Fort Lauderdale International Airport facility;

--It seems encouraging to see all the reading I saw this past week, while on vacation on a cruise ship in the Western Caribbean;

--Making cruise ships available to the masses has taken a great deal of "mystique" and sheer, true, real pleasure out of it (I'm not trying to be a snob here, just truthful);

--When people go on cruise ships for a vacation, you'd swear they all think they are the only one on the ship. Virtually all of them seem to act as though they are the only ones in the aisle or walkway and normal awareness and manners, much too frequently, are abandoned;

--CNN no longer gives straight-forward, simple, intelligent and unbiased news on its daily newscast. Far from it. I don't know how long this has gone on but what I saw last week was infotainment, at best and insulting, throughout. It seems the only source for good, again, intelligent, unbiased news reports is PBS--and not enough people watch that;

--There are honest citizens and organizations is the world, in general, and in Florida, more specifically. To wit: I lost my rather expensive digital SLR 35mm camera on a public rail line from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami a little over a week ago. I phoned them YESTERDAY about it and they confirmed by phone this morning that they do, indeed, have it. Yow. Yay! Things like this make you hopeful for mankind.

Everyone's going to want a piece of this

I've said several times that at least I should have been cynical enough to see what was coming in 2000, with the election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney stealing the White House election.

Face it, we all should have bought oil stocks.

Oil and Halliburton--all we could have gotten our hands on, absolutely.

So now? Now that everyone thinks we may have hit the bottom of the market?

A couple of things are going to happen, here, folks.

First, there is going to be, as my partner, Michael said, some very real "irrational exuberance" that's going to kick in.

Everyone's going to want to make up in profits what they lost in the last few years, with this down, bear market.

And second, a whole bunch of people are going to get on that band wagon and buy oil stocks like crazy.

Today it was up to $53.00 a barrel.

That will look like such a bargain in no time, it won't be funny.

Really, it won't be funny.

Every household and speculator--everyone--is going to want to buy in to the roaring oil markets.

Congress should shut this down now by regulating the speculation markets for oil.

But they won't.

Hang on to your seats, folks, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Link to markets story today:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/energy-stocks-join-rally-petro-canada/story.aspx?guid={81E7937A-5152-44A8-A238-BFD96B830764}&siteid=yhoof

The President of the United States on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

For the record, I want to be clear that President Obama's appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno only served to cheapen the office, even if he hadn't said anything stupid which, unfortunately, he did.

I'm back!

After just getting back from a vacation and, as good fortune and hard work would have it, my first cruise on a cruise ship, it naturally gave a great deal of food for thought, so to speak.

Stopping, day after day, in different ports of call and cities, towns, countries and cultures, it helps give a little bit bigger viewpoint of the world. It may not be Europe or Africa or the former Soviet Union or anything more global--it was the Western Caribbean, after all and only 8 days--it was still a bit of a larger picture of the hemisphere, its current situation and some of its history.

The question I'm left with, after seeing these current civilizations and the remains of ancient ones like the Mayans, it seems clear, given our current world situations, that we just don't have the whole successful, supportive culture and civilization down yet.

What I mean is, after all these thousands of years of human kind's living and the lessons we can and should take from them, we still don't have sensible, intelligent, successful, working plan for a society down yet.

Think about it.

We don't.

Too much greed, surely.

You would think we could come up with some reasonable ways to educate, clothe, employ, feed and tend to the health care of all our citizens and society.

You would think.

I do.

It seems that with all the scientists, doctors, teachers, sociologists, historians and more--all the educated people, worldwide--we could set up a working,
simple and, again, intelligent society.

And in examples large and small, across the globe, it seems we're breaking down right now.

Things and places aren't working and aren't working well or right.

Russia fell apart and became the "Former Soviet Union".

South and Central America never have been coherent and working--or haven't been for years, since the Mayan or Aztec civilizations.

Africa is in pieces and has been for hundreds of years, I believe.

China is not a working, sustainable society as it exists today.

The examples go on.

It would seem Denmark and some other Scandinavian countries come closest to truly be successful, supportable and functioning for all, though who knows? I could be proven wrong there.

In the current world situation, it seems wealth, as always, rules.

And that's not supportable and able to work in the long run.

It doesn't make one very hopeful for us.

It brings up the same old, simple, possibly funny but also possibly poignant question from years ago:

Why can't we all just get along?


(The first thing we should all do is outlaw war).

Our institutions are failing us

Our governments are not doing their collective jobs well at all, our churches have us do silly, pointless, unproductive things to ourselves--
maybe this is an improvement, since they used to have us kill one another--while. finally, our corporations drain and killus.

All I need to say about our govenrments not working is the current national and international financial, economic and banking crises. That along
points it all out but add that they are taking money in all kinds of amounts from businesses and business people, instead os doing their job and working
for us, the people they are supposed to be representing and working for.

--Some examples of our silly church practices::

==Hassidic Jews, with their required haircuts and black, "just so" clothing;

--Sikh Indians, with their rules about men never cutting hteir hair;

--Mormans with their "magic underwear";

--Catholics with their magic "blessings" and "holy water" (you gotta be kidding me);

--Amish people not using electricity (aparently because God doesn't want us to be warm in the winter or cool in the summer, eh?);

--Swirling dervishes, who do all that spinning to "get closer to God."

Shouldn't churches just be concerned with getting us all to help and work with one another? Wouldn't that be a better use of their--and our--time?
Wouldn't that be a better function for a church? All churches?

Examples of how our corporations are killing us:

--Bhopal, India in 1984 when Union Carbide has a gas explosion;

--Our food corporations are putting chemicals in our foods, along with fats and salt and sugars of all kinds, that are having the effects of making our
lives more miserable, while we're here, and then kiling us prematurely;

--those same food corporations and chemical corporations (and no doubt others, too) poisoning our soil, air and water, all for their various uses and
profits;

--the nature of corporations and their structures, period, which constantly, annually, require ever-increasng profits, to the detriment of their own
employees, since so much of their profits frequently, obscenely-largely go to executives and executive pay, while being taken from the most of the
employees;

And one of the subtle worst--taking all our working lives from us but giving us no means to take care of ourselves once their through with us and we're
elderly, preferably with a pension or some such;

This isn't working. Our instutions are failing us. They need to make sense and work for us. They're not, as I've illustrated.

We need to change them and have them work for us.

We need to get busy and take our lives and our worlds back.

"Workers of the workd, unite."

Happy St. Patrick's Day

As I write this, we're warming up in our area.

We were warmer today and the forecast is to hit nearly 80 degrees on this St. Patrick's Day.

Hip-hip-hooray.

The Dow was up about 700 points by the end of last week and we're almost into Spring.

Yow.

More hope.

As it is, I am on vacation and computer hook ups are unavailable (by my choice, really).

So my next entry here should be this coming Sunday.

I didn't want to miss this opportunity to wish you a Happy St. Patty's Day.

A new consensus?

Word out Friday was that the Chinese don't want the Americans blowing all that big money on bailouts, for the very real fear that it could and would devalue the dollar, thereby devaluing Chinese investments.

Hmmm.

This sounds strangely familiar.

If you put this rather big news, coming from Chinese leader Wen Jiabao, together with the fact that, lately, some banks are saying "no thank you" to the Feds for that same bailout money, wouldn't it seem like we have a bit of a consensus here?

Mind you, it's only 3 banks (out of 487) but maybe more banks will get some courage up and either want to return it or out-and-out do so.

Citigroup and GM said they need no more money from the Feds right now, too.

Anyway, it's interesting, at least, that these completely different organizations in totally different physical and structural locations come to the same conclusion.

This could possibly mean that our response has been one of desperation and panic and that maybe this isn't the way to go.

Stay tuned.

It's as I've said, since we're in totally new territory, financially, it's hard to tell where we are.

Unfortunately, it's like a recession--we'll find out after we're already long since there.


Links to original stories:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090313/ap_on_bi_ge/as_china_us_economy
http://www.propublica.org/article/third-bank-says-it-will-return-bailout-funds-but-487-banks-keep-theirs-311

Another committee?

After the debacle that was the Bush administration, it seems clear we need government.

We need roads and streets and bridges.

We need the people who respond to fight fires and help people after floods and hurricanes (think Katrina) and all that, sure.

Hey, I'm a left-wing, bleeding heart liberal, as you know if you've read here in the past.

But there is--there has to be--some point at which there really is just too much government.

The Department of Homeland Security is surely one of those.

We've had the FBI and the CIA for years and they're supposed to protect us internally and from outside the country, from threats.

Why did we need to create another large, tax-gobbling bureaucracy to keep us safe?

If the FAA had done its job at our airports and kept people from having pocket knives on-board commercial airlines, chances are the attacks on 9/11 wouldn't have occured. (For that matter, if President George W. Bush, at the time, had read and responded to his Daily Presidential Briefing, which warned him of a possible attack at our airports by Muslim extremists, the attacks on 9/11 wouldn't have happened, but that gets forgotten).

With the current financial/fiscal mess the country is experiencing, the last thing we need is to keep creating positions in the White House and country.

A "Car Czar" comes to mind.

Do we really need a "Car Czar"?

What is the Commerce Department doing?

Can't some person or persons in the Commerce Department keep an eye on the automobile industry and report back to the President on what's happening and what we need to do?

What brings this to mind is President Obama's creation this week of a White House Council on Women and Girls.

As the father of a girl, for starters, and as someone who knows and recognizes that women need support, particularly in this male-dominated world, I know we all need this.

My first reaction to this news was to be against this new council.

Not anymore.

As long as this White House Council is kept small and on target, I think this is nothing but a good development.

Let's just not grow it to take up an entire building.

What's it going to take?

We've had all these headlines in only the last few days:

--Man opens fire in US church, pastor killed

--Police shoot gunman dead in Nevada hospital ER

--Teen kills 15 in Germany before taking own life

--Ala. gunman `cleaned his family out' in rampage

And that's just the last few days. And it's been worldwide.

How long is it going to take?

How many times do we have to have this happen until we realize we need to do something?

How many random, insane, inexplicable murders is it going to take until we think and believe and live that human lives are more important than the sales of weapons?

Sure, I'm a left-winger and no, I don't own a gun (yet) but for pity's sake, at some point, haven't we had enogh people killing people--random or not?

I repeat, what is it going to take?

How many people have to die for absolutely no reason at all until we recognize that we have to do something (or some things) about these possibilities?

And here's a thought--I'm not suggesting of saying that it ought to be registering weapons.

What I am saying is that we have to do something.

We ought to start some conversations about what options are viable and what we maybe can and should do.

A study came out this week, too, pointing out that we need to have testing of some kind or another, to find the people who have these tendencies.

My thought is, that would beat what we're doing now, which is nothing.

So let's bring it on.

Let's start testing folks to see who is capapble or randomly killing others, in whatever number.

Then wait for the NRA to go ballistic.


Links to original stories here:
http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14867353
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20090311/49b74550_3ca6_1552620090311706639784
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090311/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_school_attack
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20090311/49b74550_3ca6_1552620090311913364830
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/12/gun-laws-germany-teenage-shootings

What a dick

Isaw this Andrew Breitbart guy on Real Time with Bill Maher tonight and came to the conclusion he is a total dick.

He tried, again and again, to manipulate whatever anyone was saying, but particularly Michael Eric Dyson's statements.

What was especially obvious was that it was a television show with an interview with 3 high strung men who act like 6th grade boys.

There was just almost non-stop talking over one another.

This is why people create single-sex schools.

Boys and young men just run roughshod over one another--and the other girls who might otherwise be in the classroom.

It's nuts.

Anyway, I'll now watch for this Andrew Breitbart guy.

Like I watch for Bill O'Reilly.

Have a good weekend, y'all.

Here's hope

Did you see the study on religion in America that came out this past Monday?

It gave me hope for America.

It came from the Associated Press and told that "More Americans say they have no religion".

May I have an "AMEN!"?

No, seriously, this is good news.

It will be interpreted as "hell and damnation" and nothing but bad things by the religious kooks but it's just good news.

Some of the data from the article:

"A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out o of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all."

"Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey."

"Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state."

Naturally, there was also a dollop of bad news and that is "since 1990, a slightly greater share of respondents — 1.2 percent — said they were part of new religious movements, including Scientology, Wicca and Santeria."

Talk about superstitions.

I've written here before that we just need to rely more on logic, intelligence, research, intellect, reason and decency and good morals, in my opinion, than on religion, superstition, "gut-feelings", emotion and everything else that keeps us from progressing, as individuals and as a group.

It just makes sense.

Europe learned its lessons, over many centuries--and the hard way, I might add--by putting its literal faith in religion and religious institutions.

We'd do well by studying their history--and our own, for that matter.

Is it enough, this progress we've made?

No, certainly not.

But we're headed in a good direction, thank goodness.

Link to original story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090309/ap_on_re/rel_religious_america

This isn't what we voted for

A news article came out Thursday evening, pointing out that Speaker Pelosi rather cowardly passed on the ability to do away with the automatic pay raises for Congress.

The article starts it best:

"Congress' automatic pay raises are in little immediate danger of being scrapped for good, even with the economy slumping and millions of Americans unemployed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday would not commit to holding a vote on a bill to do away with the annual cost-of-living increases. She pointed out that Congress recognized the economic crisis by voting this week to skip next year's raise."

You know what?

This isn't the kind of thing we voted for.

This isn't change.

This is more of the same.

This is cowardice.

And this is wrong.

This is everything we don't want and didn't want.

Letting pay raises automatically take place, if you vote for them yourself--voting for your own pay raise--is a perfect example of what we don't want.

We have a huge deficit and a crashing economy.

But Congress is seeing that they have a pay raise.

Let's raise some hell.

This should not stand.

It's bad enough they have full health care, a big, fat, juicy pension and aren't tied into the same broken Social Security program we all are.

Let's start to undo these clowns.

They're our representatives, after all.

Let's take our country back.
_______________________________________________
Link to original story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090313/ap_on_go_co/congress_pay

I just got this in an email

And what kills me about this is 1) that one guy in here sings "my creed is equality" which is all well and good but I hope he doesn't think we have that yet, here in the "Land of the Free" and 2) I dearly, dearly wish we could all separate church and state, once and for all.

What is so hard about that?

Conservatives talk about small government but then want to throw in their Bible, into the mix. To wit: "my Bible and my Bill of Rights", they sing.

Oh, really?

I wonder if everyone knows there is an organization whose sole purpose is to support the Bill of Rights and they get heck all the time, for people wanting to go against them.

Know who it is?

The ACLU.

And don't get me started on "Faith-based Initiatives".

It makes sense. It's simple:

Government out of religion; religion out of government.

It should be a Conservative mantra.

If only we could have it.