Free Tunes, We Don't Need No Stinkin I

The Fair wage folks have been staging free concerts around the city of Eureka.
Here are some pictures from today's event on 2nd street.

Number 9

Pictures from the ninth Fair Wage Cafe

The time has come for a Fair Wage

After a 30 year assault on the working class it is time to look in a new direction. Working people are seeing their wages fall while those at the top see record pay and bonuses. Schools are closing and the roads aren't repaired while taxes on the highest earners are slashed. We tax labor at twice the rate we tax the idle rich. The wealthy bankers and financial sectors were propped up with 27 trillion dollars in no interest loans from the discount window at the Federal Reserve while the government is cutting nutritional programs for pregnant women and children. Poverty is on the increase in America while the wealth of the nation is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.

As a community we have the opportunity to challenge that trend. To say enough of your disproven trickle down nonsense. We are a community that respects the value of labor. We respect the dignity of working people and reject the idea that a person working full time can still live in poverty. The national election will be upon us soon giving us the choice between failed trickle down economics on the right and grand bargain austerity on the left. We working for the Eureka Fair Wage Act are saying that is a false choice.

Corporate profits are at record highs. We are going to require that some of those profits be put back into the community as wages for the working people. Our region has a sad economic history built on the extraction of resources, Fish, Timber and even our water leaving a legacy of boom and bust. Now the Walmarts of the world are here to extract the last remaining resource,cash from our region leaving a legacy of shuttered shops along our main street.

If you would like to join this community movement we meet Tuesdays at the Labor Temple on 8th street at 6:15. or more information is available here.

Clown or criminal that is the question?

My level of dissatisfaction with the executive branch of the current government is no secret. Once the O man signed on to the Bush war crimes I could never in good conscience vote for him again. That leaves me with a minor problem. I will vote for the inevitable obscure democrat that may make it to the primary ballot or try to pump up the Greens in June. The problem lies in the general as the alternative party has the batshit crazy competing with the pure evil.
The campaign fund raising season has already arrived and the Far right are speaking to the hicks in Iowa. I actually know some folks that live in that state and they are nice enough. I just want to live in an actual free society one day governed by the rule of law and elected democratically. I know that is a delusion but we are closer than 60 years ago so continuing to work in that direction is not completely insane. George was right about the scraps that we get to fight over are just that, but they are also the difference between crappy jobs and serfdom.
The god squad is dangerous to the health of society. Obama doubling the money for the faith clowns is another in a long list of poor policy decisions. That is nothing compared to the kind of crazy that eye of Newt is selling. As an adulterous piece of trash his only hope to get around the rubes is to go all super christy I have sinned but I believe in the forgiveness of Jebus. He may be a true believer, they shit all over everyone they can and then pray when they get caught. As they follow the one true god they are chosen and since the novel they follow is so archaic and poorly written they can twist pretty much any kind of bullshit they choose to out of it. Either way he is now pushing some new version of manifest destiny and the founding fathers were all about the god nonsense. That and only the religious and only a those that follow “true religion”, can be real Americans. It works on the lizard brains of the masses they say.
The next group of dingbats vying for the Rethug mantle are the get rich running folks. Sarah Palin, Mike Huckleberry and Mitt Romney. All are running for the next reality show and to get rich. Michele Bachman is another member of this crowd but her actual position as an elected official limits her earning power if not her psychotic ravings.
The BP disaster seems to have cooled out Jindal from the bayou. There are some other governors in the running Pawlenty or Kasich and Barbour but they have no charisma and thus no shot.
In conclusion we can be ruled by the know nothings or sell out scum. Not a very appealing choice.

In the case of Ellsberg and Asange I see the need for exposing secrets of governments. It is never in the interest of the democratic electorate for the government to lie to the populace. They serve the public good by exposing those deceits. I do not see how the publishing of private medical records serves any public good. If you are doing this as an attempt to be a cool anarchist type you suck even more. Fuck with the corporations all you want but don’t pick on the vulnerable in society to demonstrate your awesome cleverness.

The New Boss Same as the...

The Tea baggers are missing the boat on their tyranny complaint. There was an election and the elected leaders making decisions you don’t like in a representative republic is not tyranny. They either do not understand or the do not care about the concept of equal protection under the law.

Ordering the killing of a citizen without trial, indefinite detention and torture; now that is tyranny. The right has found no problem with the police state that has emerged post 2001 but the evaporation of their 401k has them screaming. They are the right wing of the republican party and they determine every election they lose to be illegitimate.

They claim to want a return to the constitution but they abandon their first principles when they are scared. Private property and the right to do with it what you want without those meddlesome government busy bodies telling you what to do with it. They scream this till they are red in the face when they are not allowed to rip the tops off mountains. When the, “scary other” in the form of a Muslim cultural center can be used to gin up xenophobia with the complicity of our media I worry about us as a society. They love the idea of divided government yet hate the third branch.

I like the idea that anyone that is offended by a church can bitch about it and the church has to go away. If we want that to be the standard I favor it so that I can travel about and protest and stop ignorance factories would be cool. It would however not be very American, but one has to live in the times one is given and work within the system. That is if you actually believe in the rule of law.

My idea doesn’t violate the first amendment because I would treat all churches the same. It also had zero shot of happening because those folks have abandoned the notion of no state religion from the jump. They are the ones claiming that we are a christian nation. The fact that a state religion is specifically outlawed by the constitution again doesn’t bother these principled patriots.
I am in an odd position with the mosque controversy but in the end I have no new solution that will work better than allowing all the ignorant to compete for the worst ideas and trying to educate the world that all superstition is equally evil. once you believe in magic ignorance is all you contribute to the culture.

The Shirley situation.

This is to give a historical perspective for My comments on the smearing and firing of Shirley Sherrod.

Segregation was fought in the fifties and sixties changing the laws.
In the seventies forced integration was used by the courts to try to do what the forces of society would not and they achieved one of the desired results; young people today have lost the racial prejudice portion of their tribalism in vast numbers.

In the seventies the expansion of women into the work force as well as minorities effectively crushed the upward mobility of labor. The combination of loss of ego structure created a serious backlash in the eighties leading to Reagan being elected and the strange relationship of poor rural people voting for the interests of the rich against themselves in the vain hope that they would regain their superior position.

The nineties presented the one percent at the top with the unprecedented opportunity to pit third world labor against the American working class. As they had pitted the poor blacks against the poor whites. Further reducing the pie for the no longer rising working class now some what integrated.

Allowing the education system to erode was a factor in that ability to shift labor overseas. When the courts forced the schools to integrate in the south the whites fled to private schools. There were similar flights in the north but they created a different style of problem, the suburb. As a result the public school system in the south received inadequate funds as did the city schools in the north and the bottom half of the populace was left with effectively no education.

With the removal of trade protection in the free trade agreements and the ability of computer directed machines to simplify the work requiring one skilled programmer to supervise less and less skilled workers doing more complex tasks.

The speaker at an event for the NAACP, Shirley Sherrod was relating her experiences over this period to demonstrate the evolution of her thinking on economics. I personally find this type of speech a waste of time. I find anecdotes to be bullshit, give me the facts to make the general case. I am not part of the aggrieved class and I understand that lots of people need a narrative.

There is value for the aggrieved to tell their stories. It makes them feel better if nothing else. I think if your father is murdered and you don’t get justice you have the right to at least be heard honestly on the subject. . In this event she was simply abused by the powerful a second time.

The right wing desperately wants to roll back the civil rights movement. They feel that enforcement of the equal protection clause was the beginning of the end of limited government in the modern era. They may or may not be racist in their motivation they simply want all restrictions removed from private property.
To that end they have persons that believe that, “the end justifies the means” and a propaganda piece was created to counter the accusation that there exists a racist element in the far right. The only counter the racist’s seem to be able to muster is that the Obama administration and black people are reverse racists.

I tweeted the other day about the Senator from Virginia and his fail on why blacks should just get over being treated like crap. His earlier works of misogyny were overlooked by many in the attempt to get to 60 votes but he is treading close to Mel Gibson land for my taste. When the propaganda is released this is the type of ignorant mind set that is predisposed to believe it. The Media seem to be predisposed to the same view as they accept this tripe at face value. The disturbing reaction is how afraid the White House and cabinet are of the reverse racism meme.

If you take seriously the idea that the NAACP is part of a wave of oppression washing over white people in America you are divorced from reality to an extent that it is pointless for me to respond. All the data shows that it sucks to be poor but to be nonwhite makes poverty more likely.

The ease with which all those involved accepted the lie points to the sad truth that still have a vast chasm to bridge on the path to equality for all.

If you build it

If you build it, it will break. Get used to it there is nothing ever built with a 100% success rate. Even NASA with all of their technical expertise has about a 2% death rate per astronaut flight and those failures have been spectacular. When president Obama was speaking on April 2nd as he was signing on to the drill baby drill mantra and opening up the east coast to off shore drilling he claimed that oil wells don’t leak. He claimed that the leaks in the Gulf of Mexico after every hurricane are from refineries not from wells.
Here is a transcript link,I am looking for the video they used but it is not up on the ABC site yet.
I will put my plug in here for the disqualifying defect of being under the God Delusion. If you believe in that for which there is no evidence, if you conduct conversations with your imaginary friend and think that he is going to act in some way you are unfit to make any decisions for anyone other than yourself.
Faith as a virtue is a destructive meme. It results in the best case scenario being adopted by the risk management folks as the worst case scenario. I cannot speak for other nations but the American Exceptionalism that is hammered into children in the US with a religious fervor doesn’t help. Manifest destiny is a myth used to justify genocide. There is at present a horrible example of this being sold to a whole new generation on the history channel as slavery was just an unfortunate externality of the booming cotton trade that American ingenuity created with the cotton gin. It wasn’t desperate people fleeing exhausted farm land that came west but adventure seeking entrepreneurs. They completely ignore the propaganda that was spread to get folks to go just as they ignore the fraud conducted by everyone of their business people talking heads. Why am I surprised that the network that has the “The Nostradumbass Effect,” as a serious program gives a crap about reality. They are selling a narrative that has always been a lie from the time they said George could never tell one.
Back to my point and I do have one, there are no failure proof systems. When some one tells you that their widget can’t break they are lying. When the President goes in front of the cameras as he did on April 2nd 2010 and tells you that oil wells never leak anymore in hurricanes he is lying his ass off. Just another in the long list of acts that put him up there with the worst presidents in my lifetime. (Bush, Nixon, Reagan) the order is determined by the number of innocent people they murdered in unjust wars. Saint Ron the traitor had a much larger negative effect than the others as his “gospel of government bad” is still propelling the ignorance of sister Sarah on us today.
Escalating unjust wars
Spying on citizens without warrants and ordering their murder without due process. Murdering civilians with drone strikes in violation of law without a declaration of war. Then having the poor taste to joke about it.
Failing to prosecute torture and crimes against humanity. Continuing to commit said torture and crimes against humanity at military installations around the world.
This is not the change I voted for.

Why I fight for what I fight for

The answer to the "why are we here question" is not going to make the world a better place because even if you found it most people wouldn't believe it. I say this because we actually have answered it scientifically and around the world people refuse in droves to accept it.
There is no reason behind the beginning and there is nothing after the end. What we have in between, because we are sentient, is the opportunity to create a world in which we can all enjoy the fruits of knowledge. As long as we sell the ignorant on pie in the sky they will never have pie. It is my position that we could all have pie at some point if we stopped being ignorant assholes. There really is a lot of pie. We may need to have fewer people but we definitely need a more equitable pie man.

Rebut follow up

This is a follow up to my original cash for clunkers posts. For those that can’t seem to write a comment without racial or ethnic slurs, I moderate my pages on the web and delete that type of screed. If all you want to do is scream F bombs at the top of your voice I delete that type of thing as well. Bring facts to the discussion and the occasional swear is part of the language, shouting obscenities because you have no ideas is par for the conservative cause I find it tiresome.
The program was a huge success. 690,000 cars were sold in a month due to the program but auto sale were pushed above the rate of 10 million for the year for the first time since 2008. This has reduced inventories and sped up production for several auto makers. This was the primary purpose, Temporary filling of the demand gap caused by the recession. Will it last? We will have to wait and see. The car lots here are empty of New small fuel efficient vehicles.
The average fuel economy increase was 58 % from 15.8 to 24.8. We did better at 70% but the total while better than nothing is small in the total scheme of global warming.
I was surprised at the hatred shown for a couple of disabled veterans. The idea that those living on fixed incomes are some how irresponsible. The idea that a couple of guys that took responsibility for defending the nation are not responsible enough to pay their bills seems counter factual.
The economic activity that the program produced was huge but it did point out some problems that need to be addressed.
The contacting out of services has been a total disaster. The private sector is so incompetent that it cannot seem to do anything. that’s right the private sector. All this complaining about bad web site design and poor service should be directed at the Citi Group, a private contractor doing a typically haphazard job just as the private sector always does.
The car dealers that knew they would have to front the cars were typical corporate scum and screwed the consumers to the wall. It was not the government screwing up at every turn but the vaunted private sector.
The Idea that 1.4% of the market would have a devastating effect on a market that was already 22% off seems preposterous on its face. This is the CARS is killing the poor and destroying mom and pop used car dealers.
People are getting rid of all these great cars for the 4500 dollars is the most common lie I come across. In 2005 I bought X good mileage car and my neighbor bought Y gas guzzler and he can trade his in and I can’t get a new car and I am paying for his. Bull from the jump. As you only got 4500 dollars maximum the trades were crap. Every time the blue book proved them to be misinformed ,to be kind ,although most of these sock puppet commenter’s were simply lying to create propaganda.
Could it have been done better? Yes, but large bureaucratic structures are not conducive to rapid movement. The economic modelers are either no good or are not being listened to. The bill was written very craftily to encourage rapid movement and to require the industry to bear part of the risk. The Dealers being skanks was obvious to anyone outside looking in. Car dealers are conservatives, they hate the government that hands them subsidies hand over fist so they want Obama to fail but they will of course profit from it. That and gap financing would have eaten into the profits and good capitalists always externalize the cost. I can understand them not getting this as they are not the kind of people that deal with corporate scum from the bottom.
The not being ready for the panicked rush is about their models. They built in the uncertainty factor to maximize the multiplier effect. They simply would have had to include the line that all compliant deals within the time frame would be honored but they deliberately didn’t. Having taken that step not being ready for a stampede shows that they had a bad model or they ignored what the model told them. We need to find out which. These guys are supposed to be the best around but they can’t do a little math. They had $50 million for overhead, band width and servers are cheap but profit maximization corporations step in on a no bid contract and we will now never be able to find out what the truth is.
The losers in this are not entirely clear but some of the complainers would seem to be attributing things that aren’t there. The charity car market crashed when they stopped allowing you to deduct book value for cars that were trash. As soon as they began only giving realistic deductions the adds went away overnight. The crashing of the used car market was in place long before this program began. The program has not helped it but numbers do not support it.
The arguments against stimulus lost at the ballot box and in the legislature so either you do not like democracy or you are just a bunch of sore losers. Either way I do not expect the facts to have any effect on the vast majority. I can only counter with what facts I can find and see what happens.
Those that complained that they had a clunker that didn’t qualify I tend to be sympathetic to your plight. If a second stimulus bill is proposed I would alter the program to include a larger range if the improvement is 50% MPG improvement or better. I do not favor another bill. The current bill has at least 18 months remaining so it is way too early to asses the effectiveness of the total package. That and the technical economic data show that it might be working as well as it can and consumer confidence is already beginning to rebound.
As to the buy American Buchanites out there you lost that battle when Nixon went to china. Nissan employs more Americans than Chrysler . Everyone at the dealership was an American worker. Our local credit union employs American workers. The concept that one corporation is American and for America and that some other corporation is a foreign devil against us is just so much nonsense to me.
It was not a good buy from an environmental standpoint and we should have spent the money on transit or renewable energy. The standards could have been tougher but the majority went way beyond the minimum standard anyway . Taking the money for the additional 2 billion from renewable funds was a bad idea but that happens in a compromise bill. The amount of funds that could be spent quickly on transit was finite.
Poor people that have to drive shitty cars. They may have less choice in their old beaters but there will be a glut of non drive train parts. I still maintain that the percentage of the market in used cars is so small as to be negligible but when you are poor it is the cumulative effects that keep you down.

Some Random Thoughts

Have been trying to get back into training and have done a couple of long rides. Want to ride the "Tour of The Unknown Coast" next month. Rode by some of Sarah Palin's "Real Americans" at a Tea Bagging party in Eureka. They were some of the same faces I saw at rally's for the District Attorney recall that was defeated a few years back. They had no answer as to why they were protesting now when they were getting a tax cut. Why had they been silent as Raygun and Shrub bankrupted the country with 10 trillion dollars worth of debt? Their reply was that they were conservatives and that Bush wasn't a conservative. I laughed in their faces, I know that is rude but I meet ignorance with contempt. I am posting a little video that I had put up as an Ireport at cnn. They had tech problems and that ended up skewing the story. I think these folks are for the most part frustrated with their inability to win the election. Because they are conditioned to believe the irrational by their church they think they are right. the abject failure of their policies doesn't phase them in the least as they are fact averse.

The turnout was about the same in the sun as the Peace march brought out in the Hailstorm. In Arcata, not so much.

I was unhappy that only the Arcata flick made it up on Cnn and I felt that spun the story inappropriately. Here I express my opinions but when I put things up as news I try to be factual.

Why the sex trade will stay illegal.

Today is the international day to end violence against sex workers day. The key to this in my opinion is to destigmatize and decriminalize these activities. I am sad to say I see neither of these things happening anytime soon.
The rich need to have low cost whores available to the rabble or they will agitate for enough money to have the same access to sex that others have. Once they stigmatize an individual through a criminal record the worker has many fewer options for making a living. They keep the options limited they keep the prices down and prevent the workers from garnering enough resources to change their life in a capitalist system.
The second factor is the prison industrial complex. Many parts of rural America are dependent upon incarceration for their economic development. We lost our manufacturing and built prisons and those cells need to have occupants. The police exploit the poor at all levels forcing them to become informants and extorting the poor workers for favors. This is more control of the underclass.
If legalized the workers would be entitled to police protection like any other commercial enterprise. The policing of the lower classes is punitive not protective for the most part.
The moralists are too wrapped up in their superstition to allow reason to get in the way of punishing sin. These are a powerful constituency and sex workers are not. The patrons that have a modicum of power are shamed into silence so the puritans get their way.

Fall Fallacies

A long list of random thoughts for a fall Friday. On a sad note Bettie Page died on Thursday after a heart attack a few days ago. A free spirit that was tormented by the puritans and exploited by the photographers of her day. This Bio book is pretty good if you are unfamiliar with her or check out this web page.
The Senate failed to Put together a bail out package for the Big 3 and now the shrub in chief is saying that the TARP will work out some sort of kick the can down the road loan. The parting shot of the free market mystics at union busting will probably give us a total cluster fuck to the bread lines. Unrestricted no strings attached money is so much better than a planned bill but hey I was against the plan anyway. I have written before about a bottom up approach to these bailouts rather than top down.
The more I read about this current financial meltdown The less sense I am able to make of it. I have more research to do but my take from readings so far leads me to think fraud is the cause more than anything else. People lying about value, capitalism in a nutshell is the root of this mess. The bond raters being paid by the bond sellers enabled a huge fraud to be perpetuated on investors. Appraisers and lending brokers getting paid on the transaction rather than the success of the transaction led to loans being made to people that had no chance to repay them. The ponzi scheme nature of our economy came tumbling down due to lying by the institutions that established the value. Putting the CDS, (credit default swaps) out of the reach of regulators by Phil Grahams Enron loopholes meant that nobody was responsible for minding the store. Greenspan robbing the poor to pay Wall street with interest rates kept the bubble building and when oil prices spiked the house of cards collapsed.
Corruption reared it’s ugly head in Illinois politics when the Gov tried to sell a senate seat. Quoting Captain Renault I am shocked , shocked to see crooked politicians in Chicago. The sad part is that it has given the right wingnutosphere the opening it needed to begin delegitimizing the Obama presidency. I do not think we are in a post partisan era, in fact the idea of a post partisan era is stupid. We are back to the Rushbo era of, “Clinton is holding America hostage” and nothing will get done. Yes I am a pessimist and the lame group of DLC and Clinton era holdovers that populate the Obama cabinet give me zero reason to question my skepticism. As I am getting a large COLA next month deflation works for me right up until the government collapses and we got to anarchy. I am way to old for that.

Car wreck economy

I am watching the markets fall again today and the news is reporting another round of government plans for bailouts. There is talk of another stimulus package and a bailout of the big three auto makers. The liberal bloggosphere is now debating how to make the car makers eco-friendly in exchange for the money. More of the too big to fail mentality that is doomed to failure. This will be a horrible boondoggle just as the financial sector bailout is turning into.
The auto industry is not truly in trouble just the American auto industry. Yes all sales are down but in this recession but the big three were tanking long before the downturn. This is a symptom of a larger American attitude that is the root of the problem but first let us look at industry as a whole. Companies like Volkswagen and Toyota are profitable and have been while GM looses billions. If we are going to bail out bad decisions and bad business practices we must abandon the idea that we are a market economy. Rather than pour money down the rat hole let these companies go into bankruptcy and have the government backstop the people at the bottom that will lose out. Don’t hand the idiots running these companies billions to waste instead let them fail and take over the pension and medical insurance payments for the retirees. This should be done as part of a national single payer health care reform that will help to make all American industry more viable and competitive.
The big three have been losing market share due to bad products and poor workmanship. The market does in fact work in cars, make a product people want and it sells. Once you have a reputation for making bad poor quality products it is tough to come back. This brings me back to the larger American attitude that is failing. Marketing will make up for bad product. The big three think polishing a turd is the solution rather than flushing the toilet.
The idea that we are going to bail out these companies seems to no longer be the argument but how the government should determine what they make is the position of the left. The right and let them fail is actually correct but their reasoning as usual is faulty and they do not want to deal with the fallout. Planned economies fail. I have accepted that fact even though I tend toward socialist solutions. The market is pretty good at deciding which types of goods consumers will buy. Badly made poor quality ugly looking boxy hybrids will tank and that is the kind of crap Detroit’s designers will spew forth if the government steps in with mandates in exchange for loan guarantees. The management of the big three are of the same mentality as the American way of life is nonnegotiable wing of the anti environmental party. The automobile is not conducive to a sustainable lifestyle for 6 billion plus people and the sooner we warm up to that concept the sooner we can keep the world from getting too hot.
Let them fail. Force the unions to work out a new deal and let the taxpayers bail out the retirees not the investors. Take the money and spend it on public transportation. There simply are not enough resources in the world for everyone to drive around in their own car. This is the fundamental change that we need to deal with. If we start now we can save lots of pain in the long run.

Election wrap

Slept late today and now over coffee I thought I would take a few minutes to analyze the 08 vote. I am glad Obama beat McCain 4 more years of the same old republican nonsense would have been a disaster but I do not see the huge transformation that the jabbering heads are on about. Yes a black man won and that is historic but the world of the redneck is still full of rednecks. In an election that had the worst economy in my lifetime and two failed wars almost all of fly over country still voted as it always does. If the market collapse had been stalled a few more months who knows? If McCain picks a remotely qualified running mate again we will never know.
I think that because I am of the opinion that people are of a single species and that the variation within the group has been shown to be greater than variations by skin color I just don’t find race very interesting. The invective that I saw in the campaign showed me that racism is still prevalent and that we have a huge number of bigots wandering among us. The failure of all of the progressive ballot initiatives tends to prove my point. Equal rights for gays lost even in California. That should not be that big a surprise as once you get 50 miles inland California has become Alabama in some respects. Even when same sex marriage was legal the folks in Bakersfield tried to prevent couples from getting licenses, just one example.
I am a cynic and do not trust anyone that spews the level of religiosity that Obama professes but he has a mandate. It remains to be seen what he does with it. In the meantime the court battles over rights will begin in California and the corporate scum will begin to delegitamize the left with claims of, “America is center right” while the left pushes back. In the end I will not be surprised when a year from now nothing has changed much. We are still a population that cares more about the caged chicken we are going to slaughter than our neighbors.

Another old man screams at the clouds

Some random things that are irritating me. People sighting the continued ads for credit as evidence that the credit markets are not ready to collapse. The point of the bailout is to prevent the collapse. If you wait until the system has collapsed and jobs are lost and companies fail it is too late. The rich are going to make out better on any bailout put forward. Life is not fair get over it. We can go back later and try to impose some taxes and surcharges to attempt to balance the pain but if we allow the credit system to fail to stick it to the wall street bunch we will all be screwed and it could take a decade to pull out of it. The Paulson plan sucks and I have outlined my ideas to improve it but to argue with nonsense just pisses me off. If you can’t think through your argument and see that they at least are coherent shut up and let the adults in the room deal with it.
People telling Sarah Palin to step down as the republican Veep nominee for the good of the country. This has got to be the dumbest thing I have heard in politics since , well Sarah Palin trying to answer a question. Caribou Barbie meets the constitutional requirements to be the Vice President. Would she be terrible? Is she undereducated and lacking in deliberative judgment? Yes and yes but that is not the issue. If the majority of Americans want a moron to run the government than they have every right to vote for a moron. I am not worried as I think more people value a well run government and will not be fooled by McCain and his blatant pandering. People voted for the dumb one in 2004 and it was a disaster for some poor folks, think New Orleans after Katrina, but life was going to suck for those folks even with a good president. We have the opportunity in this election to change the course of the country for the better but if most people want to vote for someone that shares their views on the imaginary friend nonsense that is their right. If the morons win and the old man dies the country will go on. We have had a moron in the big chair for 8 years and if the voters do not see that that is not a good thing than they get the government they deserve.
The people not taking responsibility for their part in the nations problems. I have no desire to castigate those that seek instant gratification and get what they want damn the consequences. You only get one life and it can go to shit for reasons beyond your control at any time but if that is how you chose to live don’t piss and moan when it blows up. “Live fast die, young and leave a good looking corpse” is a fine philosophy but if you don’t die and your body is screwed it is on you. If you bought a house that you can no longer afford because the interest rates reset it is your fault. Prices do not go up forever. You gambled and lost, there is no shame in that just in trying to blame someone else for it. If you are bankrupt because you lived beyond your means for years buying toys it is your fault. You have your priorities wrong and you need to adjust your lifestyle. Yes it sucks that they advertise things that you can’t have. If you think that the material crap will make you happy than by all means attempt to get it but as I said above life is not fair.

Economy Rant

As part of my efforts to become a new media douche bag I have entered the realm of podcasting. My Virtual midlife crisis first episode is up here a rant about economic deception.