It's Not Really A Stain, It's More Like A Black Hole

John McCain has said before, repeatedly and will say again, that Barak Obama doesn't have what it takes to be president. Not the courage. Not the patriotism. Not the judgement. Not the experience. Not the support of "real" Americans. The only thing he's never claimed, is that he lacks the intelligence. Heh.

McCain's family roots are in the agrarian society of the old South. His father's father's father's father owned a large plantation in Mississippi, worked by scores of African chattel, bred like dogs and worked like mules, to enrich the white land owners. Beaten, chained and starved if they disobeyed. In other parts of the South, if a slave couldn't be broken, they were sold on down the river. In Mississippi, there was no further on down the river. The slaves there broke or they died.

I had a friend in the Navy, from Raleigh, North Carolina. His father told him, "Always remember, we're not from here. You're a Mississippi nigger. You're the toughest, strongest, smartest kind of man ever born. Whatever they do to you, they can never kill you, because if they could've they would've."

My friend said it proud and believed every word.

McCain says he never knew about his families past. It's a lie. The plantation was owned by his relatives until 1958, slaves replaced by only marginally better off sharecroppers. He visited, if not frequently, enough to understand.

After the Civil War, the Men of the McCain family found employment as Naval officers. If they lacked a certain degree of intelligence, they made up for it in resolution, determination and an understanding of the effectiveness of iron hard discipline, which they no doubt exercised on the poor wretches before the mast with the same cruel zeal that they had previously meted out to their human property in the fields of the Delta. It is not surprising that the McCain men rose to the highest echelon of the officer corps of the United States Navy.

Like his forebears, John McCain grew up small, mean and not burdened by any excess of intelligence or sensitivity. Unlike them, he had nothing but contempt for authority and idolized the punk hero movie stars of his youth, first Marlon Brando, then James Dean. He identified with the overt stubborn rebelliousness of the characters they portrayed. The quest for human contact and redemption in subtext, was simply beyond his ken. He was contemptuous of all organized social settings. School was no exception. He started out poorly and did not improve with time. There was no favorite subject to ignite the flame of learning and scholarship in his runty little breast. He did find a passion in life and early, carousal. While he engaged in the drinking that was part of the ritual, that wasn't the main attraction. It was the opportunity to travel about the countryside, sneering, taunting and intimidating those he met, that rang his bell. It was an opportunity to demonstrate to his companions of the moment, how he could make up for a lack of intelligence and manners with brutish pugnacity.

This behavior continued all through his youth right up to his graduation from Annapolis, where he had been admitted as an unwanted but unavoidable legacy and graduated at the very bottom of his class. There is no doubt he would have been tossed out or even sent to the fleet as an unrated sailor, if it hadn't been for his lineage.

Much has been made of John McCain's Naval career. There isn't really much to it. He was a bad pilot. The only auspicious act he ever engaged in was to be shot down, severely injured, while crashing his plane into a lake in Hanoi and not managing to die. The entire legend of the man revolves around his experiences for six years as a prisoner of war and his decision not to accept repatriation early, when offered, due to his fathers high rank. You have to give credit where it is due. That was the one honorable act of his entire life.

Upon his return to freedom, he resumed his old ways. The Navy promoted him as if he had advanced normally during the six years of his captivity, something that almost certainly would not have happened otherwise. They gave him one last bump in grade after that and showed him the door. He spurned his wife and family, then married the daughter of a wealthy benefactor. He has lived apart from his second wife for all of the quarter century of their marriage. She wisely keeps the purse strings and thus the balance of power, closely held in her own hands.

John McCain found success in Congress. He has gained power and respect without having to show either accomplishment or accountability. He has managed this by always being available and amenable to the wealthy and influential that need a voice and a vote under the Capital dome. He has had mentors, allies and patrons in plenty, during his life. If he has had even one real friend and confidant, I have yet to hear of them.

This is John McCain. The man who would be President of the United States of America.

Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Obama Needs The Guy That Can Make 'Em Squeal Like A Pig, Not The Guy With A Pretty Mouth

All the Networks are confirming that Barak Obama has chosen Joseph Biden of Delaware to be his running mate. Good luck with that one, Barak. Biden has been in the Senate since Obama was a little boy and is one of the lions of the Senate. Is he prepared to play Gabby Hayes to Obama's John Wayne? Cuz that's the only way this thing is gonna work. This is not a match made in Heaven. Or maybe it's a brilliant move. What do I know? Only time will tell.

If Barak really wanted to go that deep, he maybe should have tapped Bobby Byrd from West Virgina. Talk about balancing the ticket. Byrd is about a hundred and fifty years old, an old Kluxxer and a common conception of his constituents in West Virginia is that they all have six toes, squint and play the banjo like the little boy from Deliverance. Some think that the only reason he is still a Democrat, is that most West Virginians are on welfare, now that the mines are shut down. Many go to church on Sunday, roll around on the floor, talk in tongues and handle venomous serpents. Byrd can deliver the "values" voters that the Republicans now control and Barak needs to win.

There was some talk that he would pick Chet Edwards, a Congressman from Waco, Texas. That would have been good. Keep the ticket young. Help him in the Southwest. He could have gone with Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico. Still young enough, Southwestern, Hispanic. Even better. There was Katherine Sebilious, Governor of Kansas. Once again, age appropriate. Good geographics and demographics. Might assuage some of Hilliary's harridans in a concession to the angry, older female vote. A fella could go on and on.

The bottom line is, that you don't invite people out to the first hunt of the season and then trot out the same old dog. Obama can still win this race but it seems like he's going out of the way to stack the deck against himself. Biden is a fine man. Intelligent, intellectual, experienced and on the right side of every issue. He is everything that Republican candidates pretend to be and never are. The problem is, that every one of his partisans is already going to vote for Obama. In that respect, even Hilliary would have been a better choice. Biden could be suited to the role of the seasoned, silent power behind the throne, a la Dick Cheney. I'm pretty sure that's not what Obama is seeking. The choice of a Vice President can bring you many things. I wonder what it is that Obama thinks Biden will bring him. Maybe he has a good reason for choosing him. Maybe he'll tell us.

Rematch!

The fundo fascist, Fox News Network can't let go of the fact that several of the Chinese Olympic contestants are almost certainly underage. You really can't argue with them. Some of the contestants were clearly closer to twelve than the mandated sixteen year old requirement. TV ratings for this Olympics are certainly going to get a bump from the pedo viewership. Some of the events, gymnastics and diving for sure, one should be careful about recording or storing on a hard drive, for fear of the authorities getting ahold of them and bringing charges.

I think, instead of seeking to disqualify the offending participants, we repeat the Beijing Olympics again next year. They've already built all the facilities necessary, so it wouldn't cost much. Maybe next time, they could convince people to come. We will still let them use the little kids. We will not stoop to the exploitation of innocent children. Instead we will scour our sporting community for the most androgen amped, pituitarily enhanced, methamphetamine fueled, transgendered behemoths we can find and pack our teams full of them. Blood testing will be dispensed with for these, second games. Women's beach volleyball will become a full contact sport.

I predict the medal count will be satisfyingly different.

It's All About Change And That's Not A good Thing

The party conventions loom but the campaigns are already well underway. The Republicans worry that radical terrorists will disrupt their Twin Cities gathering. The city of Denver has converted a downtown warehouse into a booking and holding center in anticipation of Democratic angst. Oh please. The conventions, both of them, will be snorers. Neither candidate has any business running for President. The best you can say for them is that they were the least crippled specimen born in a bad litter.

The United States is a great country but it has lost its way. It and it's government are heading for a fall. Everybody knows it. You can feel it. In the wind. In the streets. Around the dinner table. Everybody has an opinion about what's going to happen but nobody knows. They only know that what we do now, isn't going to matter. People go to work. They come home. They spend time with their families. These aren't good times but people know, instinctively, that these are the best times we are likely to have. Maybe for a long time to come.

I'm not talkin' the Four Horseman here. The apocalypse is not at hand. You probably don't need the guns, ammo and emergency food supplies you have down in the basement. On the other hand, if it makes you sleep better at night, it couldn't hurt.

The government, politicians, elections? If I thought any of that mattered, I'd probably care more.

I'm just waiting. Just like everybody else.

Wake me when the curtain comes up and the show starts.

High Times

Teenagers drink. A lot. Whenever they can. As much as they can get. It's not a new phenomena. It's always been the case. I'm sure it's more common than in the past but it's a matter of degree rather than a real change in the social dynamic.

A hundred presidents of colleges and universities around the country have petitioned Congress to repeal legislation that forces States to impose a 21 year old drinking age or lose Federal highway funds.

The interesting thing about this is,the underage drinkers don't give a shit whether drinking is illegal or not. They can get all the liquor they want. They can drink it whenever and wherever they want. They don't bear their parents, elders or society any grudge about it. For them, it's just part of being young. It's the way things are, the way they've always been and will be. They do not find the prohibition punitive or restrictive. It's not like the kids would ever be able to drink in public anyway, that's illegal for everyone. They don't yearn to drink in bars or night clubs, most of them don't have the money for that. Besides, none of their friends or contemporaries are in those places. They find their own places to party. It's not that hard. It's more exclusive. It's more fun.

Ironically, the academic leaders want to lower the drinking age, so that they can better start a dialog with students, that they already know consume large quantities of alcohol with impunity. They actually want to work on the problem. Parents, police, churches and other figures of authority, gave up on the situation decades ago.

Underage drinking teaches young people that the rules don't really mean shit and that most of them are not reality based. The sooner they learn that, the better.

Drink up, kids!

Cheap Energy

The United States has what, 300 million people? They consume about 25 barrels of oil apiece, per year. The majority of the World's population live in Southern and Eastern Asia. This area is currently undergoing rapid economic and industrial development. They consume much more oil than they did a decade ago but still only a little more than 1 barrel a year, per person. It is likely that the energy requirements of Asia will at least double, in the next few years. They will still be using minuscule amounts per capita, compared with the developed West. The increase in the cumulative demand will be a different story.

Americans may have cut their oil usage by a percent or two, in the last several months, as the price of oil has impacted on their pocket books. They may continue to find ways to use less energy and utilize alternative sources. This would be a good thing. It's not going to affect the price of oil in the free market, in the long term.

Currently, all commodity prices are in correction and going lower. This is due to the unwinding of long positions, that tied up commodities during the recent inflationary commodities Bull Market. Now, speculators are going the other way and shorting the commodities. This is bringing prices rapidly down and releasing commodities for consumption. The availability of commodities, in excess of immediate demand, at lower prices, spurs even more drastic price reductions and continues to enrich market movers. It does not herald a new, long term era of cheap, plentiful food, fuel and industrial raw materials, which are the building blocks of human society.

We can produce the food we need and the raw materials to fuel economic growth but to do it we need energy. Petroleum is and will remain, at least for the foreseeable future, the most important energy source in the World. The majority of the World's petroleum deposits are old sources in declining production, supplemented by lesser, newer finds in ever more difficult and expensive to exploit locations. There has not been a major new source of petroleum discovered, anywhere in the World, in the last 30 years.

We may solve our problem of cheap energy requirements. The answer may be out there but if it is, nobody has found it yet.

The Bulimpics

I've been watching some of the Olympics but not too much. Maybe I'm just old and cynical. I like the idea of young, strong, healthy athletes, from all over the World, gathering together every four years to compete against each other. It seems like it's become perverted by the process though.

It is clear that many of those competing have not been allowed to have normal childhoods. Many, if not most, have spent much of their young lives training virtually nonstop, on six and seven day a week schedules, for years on end, often secluded away from family and friends, with only their trainers and fellow athletes as companions. Huge amounts of money must be expended on this training. Every possible performance enhancing accoutrement is utilized. Many have undoubtedly taken growth and strength enhancing drugs and weaned off just long enough to test negative before competition. Many are nursing injury and impairment that will hinder them in the future or even shorten their lives and possibly long term psychological damage as well. This point was slammed home to me during a past Olympics, when I saw a young man in his mid twenties, with the protruding brow ridge, splayed teeth, huge muscles and insulin dependent diabetes, of a long term, chronic steroid abuser win multiple medals. This young man is the scion of one of the richest families in America. What could he possibly have to gain from this regime, that will certainly leave him crippled, stupid and in an early grave.

China has spent an astronomical amount of money to prepare for and promote these games. Money that could be better spent improving the lives of her citizens. The corporate and commercial sponsorship of the Olympics has reached obscene levels. For all of this, not very many people went to these games. Even with the clever camera work by the television technicians, it is apparent that many of the events are sparsely attended, at best and mostly by locals who were enticed by cheap or even free tickets.

On the positive side, the fierce nationalistic jingoism that characterized the games through the Cold War era, seems to have subsided, at least somewhat.

I do not belittle the efforts or achievements of these young athletes. I hope that the participation in these games enriches their lives. I hope that they are rewarded financially by all of the commercialization and hype. The money is going to flow anyway and I can think of no more worthy recipients than the athletes who participated.

For me, I would rather watch a sand lot baseball game on a Spring evening at a public park. I would rather see a coed touch football game on the lawn of a college dormitory after a long day of classes on a Fall afternoon. I would rather watch kids vault into a swimming hole, from a rope tree swing, on a Summer day. I'd even rather watch a bunch of drunken Canuks beating each other senseless with hockey sticks on a frozen pond in February. The Olympics have become professional sports. Professional sports are a venue for gamblers and shills, not athletes. People that watch professional sports are suckers , not spectators.

Bell Burger

Fast food is crap. Almost without exception, you can whip up the same thing at home in a few minutes, twice as good at a quarter of the cost. Once they stop offering it on every corner though, it becomes an iconic memory of the cherished past.

Taco Bell used to be a model of efficiency, where bulk food commodities were prepared on site into a few different and delicious food items, offered to the public at reasonable prices that still allowed for generous profit margins.

Huge bags of pintos and blocks of lard were pressure cooked into frijoles in huge vats. Hamburger was browned and seasoned in large rectangular pans. Lettuce, onions and cheese were shredded and loaded into two gallon bags. They were all then stored in the reefer until needed. Corn tortillas were deep fried until crispy and racked up by the hundreds above the steam table.

For a few bucks you could feed a large family.

Taco Bell has changed ownership many times since the '60s. The menu has become bloated and expensive, some of the locations even sell pizza. The food is shitty. I don't go there. Still, it was the comfort food of my youth.

I used to like everything there. They would gladly customize your food items however you would like, for a little extra money. Long before meat or combination burritos were offered on the menu, you could ask for them. Green sauce , red sauce, hot sauce? No problem. One of my favorites got wiped off the menu at least 20 years ago.

The Bell Burger was a Calexican specialty that Taco Bell did very well. A hamburger bun was dressed with a little red sauce. On a bed of lettuce was placed a generous scoop of seasoned taco meat, then a little onion and cheese. They were really good. They cost $0.19, so if you were hungry, you could have two or three. Some old time, independent taco stands still offer a taco burger. The problem with most of them is, they are over stuffed, greasy, and too moist. Too often after the first bite, the remaining sandwich turns into a decomposing amorphous mass. Kind of defeats the whole concept of a taco sandwich. They also cost about six bucks per. Serious junk food money, for an exploding sandwich.

I miss Bell Burgers. If they still had the old menu at Taco Bell and they were pumping out food items at say, $0.79 each, there would still be a Taco Bell on every corner and they would still be making a fortune. As it is, there is one across the street from a high school in my neighborhood, with an open campus. At lunch, you see maybe four or five kids there at a time, tops. At least they probably get quick service.

Look for the old Taco Bell stands in your neighborhood. They are easy to recognize by the distinctive adobe shack design. Most are converted to independent fast food joints and due to the good locations, prosper. It's fun to see the different uses they put to the signature fire pit in the front. One I pass by is a Bahn Mi stand with a Buddah statue in the pit, offerings of fruit and Flowers at its feet. Another is a Hawaiian Barbecue with a koi pond, complete with lotus blossomed Lilly pads and a little tinkling clam shell fountain.

Disciples of God or Deification of Man?

Through the years, there have been many that claim to bring the truth of God to man. I don't know how timeless the messages they have revealed may be but the institutions built upon these revelations are anything but. The charismatic figures of American evangelism generate huge followings and great wealth and with these, build huge institutions in their image and what they believe to be the image of God.

You don't even need to look back into history to examine the rotting corpses of the organizations built up by William Jennings Bryant, Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson and other legends of American JesuYahoo, to see how lasting the truth is. Look at the Thomas Road Baptist Church, only a few months after the death of the Great Man. Check out the Oral Roberts Organization, even as Oral still lives and breathes, at least nominally. Billy Graham, the most revered American evangelical leader of modern times, left the pulpit only recently and already the organization is in rapid decline.

Likewise the Crystal Cathedral, Christian Broadcasting Network, and Trinity Broadcasting Network all are falling into ruin as the founders age along with their messages. It doesn't take powers of prophesy to see the future of currently ascendant religious organizations, whether they are seeking to preserve traditional values, like Focus on the Family or embrace the contemporary, like Rick Warren's Saddleback Church of the purpose driven life.

Why do Americans flock to the banners of cults that embrace the vision and message of men whose ideas will not likely even outlive them? We all have the capacity to see our own vision and hear our own message. The comfort of company on the road to a false salvation isn't worth missing out on the opportunity to have your own personal relationship with God. What God says to you is more important and more valid than anything you hear he's said to anyone else.


Embrace the God that speaks to you, secure in the knowledge that he is also speaking to every one of the billions here on Earth with you. Recognize that you are an imperfect being and you may get the specifics wrong and that your own vanity and greed may distort the message. It will still be more valid than anything you will get from anyone else. Seek to recognize and applaud God's good influence on others, rather than seeking to correct others who you perceive are getting it wrong. Exhorting others to righteousness is, in the end, the greatest sin of all. It is the sin of pride, that your own personal righteousness is the same as that of God. We each have our own lives to live and it is a daunting task. With the help of your God, work on your own life. That's enough for anyone to do.

I can't speak for anyone else but if you try and impose your vision of God on me, I'll hurt you.

McCain's VP Choice

McCain is so fucked up. The speculation is, he's considering a pro-life running mate. That would be the kiss of death with the Fundos and he needs them bad. Same thing if he picks a pro Gay rights VP. Same thing if he picks an African American. He needs the racist vote, even more than he needs the Christers and to a large extent, they are the same thing.

If he was serious about winning, he would pick a Hispanic Catholic, with strongly traditional values, someone like Mel Martinez. An even better choice would be a Hispanic woman, say Linda Chavez. It doesn't matter whether they have the experience or political gravitas normally associated with the choice. It doesn't even matter if the person is currently a Democrat. There is a local Congresswoman named Loretta Sanchez, in my county. She would be a natural. She would jump at the chance. She would switch affiliation in a second and quickly disavow any unfortunate socially liberal stands she previously has espoused. Both parties gave up running candidates with real credentials long ago. If he did that, he would win with a landslide. He won't do it because he is afraid of the immigration issue.

That's a mistake. It's a dead issue. Hispanics are here to stay. They work hard. They are naturally conservative, politically. They appreciate a stable, safe society. They don't really mind if it's not particularly democratic. They don't mind if the rich get richer. They don't mind if it's a police state. Best of all, they are Christian and a large number are even observant, unlike most Americans that identify as Christians. Moving the Hispanic vote into their party, should be the number one priority of the Republicans. It would guarantee them political ascendancy for generations to come.

The smart Republicans already know this is true. The problem is that the majority of their coalition are black dirt ignorant, ethnocentric racist, sexist, scum. These people function at the intellectual level of lemmings and changes in the party line must be carefully crafted over time, to conform with the ridiculous world view mythology that has already been built up to incorporate God, country, sacred motherhood, family values, support of unilateral military aggression at any cost and the absolute person hood of the potentially fertilizable human ova. Hitler sold the Japanese as allies to his people as "Yellow Aryans". The Republicans could do the same with Hispanics. Perhaps they could present them as, "like Texans, only smarter, cleaner and willing to work for a living."

How Can We Lower Taxes When They Don't Even Pay Any

I pay a lot of taxes. At least I think so. Federal income taxes are just under 30%. State income taxes are just under 10%. There are also a lot of payroll deductions for unemployment insurance and workman's compensation, that I am never elegible for. Sales tax is over 8% here and probably going higher. I'm not even sure how high gas tax is but it is the highest in the country. I pay property tax on my house. That's about $3,000 a year.

I would guess by the time all the dust settles every year, my wife and I pay at least 50% of our income in taxes and get damn little back.

I'm not all that upset about it. It's always been that way. What pisses me off is the way major US corporations whine, cry and demand lower tax rates. Corporations get huge perks back from the government. Energy, mining and forest product companies get leases virtually for free. Agriculture gets subsidies and cheap irrigation. Ranchers get government grazing rights. The financial industries get huge government backstop funding. Every major industry gets major concessions from the government concerning taxation.

It turns out that 2/3 of all American Corporations pay no taxes whatsoever and the rest pay damn little. As one financial analyst on Wall Street said, "Corporations have a fiduciary duty to their share holders to maximize profits in all the ways that they can." This includes paying off politicians to pass laws favorable to corporations, their operating expenses and tax burden. It's not a Republican/Democrat issue. They all sell out. Republicans just know how to put together a more attractive package and get more money. Democrats can more easily be bought for a good meal, a gram of cocaine and a friendly whore, whereas they are just preliminaries for Republicans. We aren't even giving better breaks to smaller, expanding corporations that might provide increased hiring opportunities in years to come. It is the biggest, mature, profitable sectors of Corporate America that pays the least in taxes and is more likely to get subsidies.

For the most part these companies pollute as much as they can get away with. They fight collective bargaining on the part of their employees and don't give a shit about heath hazards or dangerous workplace conditions. They bully and ride roughshod over the people who inhabit the areas where they are active.

It's been 28 years since Corporate America had any active oversight whatsoever. Bush has watched, smiling, as they ass raped the American people. Neither McCain or Obama plans to change a damn thing.

Fundo Fascists Murder Again

Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney was gunned down this morning at Party Headquarters in Little Rock. The shooter was apprehended, after being himself shot by police.

Authorities aren't releasing any information on the suspect. Let me do a little prophesying. This guy will turn out to be a divorced, unemployed, white male, perhaps a veteran, in his late 40s or 50s. He will be a homophobe but insecure about his own sexuality. He will be politically conservative. He listens to Rush Limbaugh every day. He watches Bill O'Rielly on Fox News. A small library of conservative, hate literature will be found in his small but tidy apartment. He will have a history of domestic violence and stalking of women but never challenges authority or those he is intimidated by. Many who know him will say he is a real nice guy. He will have a chronic history of job loss, due to his inability to get along with people of diverse backgrounds. He will turn out to be a big fan of Chuck Norris and Steven Segal.

The conservative talking assholes are going to once again deny that they advocate murder and hate crime violence in the furtherance of their cause. They will, once again, be lying. Every foul tactic that they employ to sway the mind of America is based in fear, terrorism and ultimately, violence and death for any who don't go along. They encourage disciples to threaten, intimidate, punish and perpetrate violence and death on those who do not follow the creed. They are foul, treasonous scum who pervert the values that they pretend to venerate and the religion that they pretend to believe in.

So What's The Point Of This Edwards Thing ?

Them fundo funksters seem to be obsessed with John Edwards extra marital proclivities. I guess because of the sympathetic image he projected during the primary race, with his dying wife Elisabeth active in the campaign, even while visibly deteriorating from terminal cancer. I don't know what mileage they get out of the mistress and prospective love child at this point. The guy's political best used by date, is long past.

Politicians are all starved for love and attention. It's the nature of the beast. Like all of us, they tend to take what they can get, where they can get it. It's not a Republican or Democrat thing. It's not even a male specific thing. We all got needs.

I guess there were a few recent Presidents that toed the line. I never heard anything about Gerald Ford. Jimmy Carter famously lusted in his heart but who doesn't. I don't think Harry Truman was much of a philanderer but I bet he wanted to be. We know FDR had a mistress and Ike as well. JFK was fixated at the adolescent stage and loved the turbulent excitement of one night stands. I'm sure LBJ wasn't above the odd commercial sexual transaction. Some Presidents were pretty kinky. Nixon used to spend weekends relaxing with his friend "BeBe" Rebozo down on Key Biscayne. It's known that BeBe liked little boys. The two of them were supposed to be fishing down there in the Keys but for what. It was commonly known, by those in the '40s Hollywood party scene, that Jane Wyman divorced Ronald Reagan when she caught him having oral sex with one of his co-stars. The co-star is most often identified as Errol Flynn. We all know about Bill Clinton and we all know it didn't start or stop with Monica Lewinsky. There are a lot of rumors about 41 floating around and if any of them are true he was a pretty wild guy, in his day. I don't even want to get into Sonny Boy. Anyone that reads this blog knows what I think of him.

Of the two current candidates for President, we know that John McCain has been a life long serial philanderer and has lived largely separate from his current wife, who was at one time one of his serial philandrees, for the entire duration of their marriage. We don't know about Barack but he's a good looking and personable young man and I'm sure he has needs and admirers.

Why pick on Edwards? He's old news. Totally over.

The Case Against Deflation

The case for deflation hinges on the decrease in the amount of money. Money can only theoretically be destroyed in two ways and neither involves the actual destruction of money.

For every dollar that the US Treasury creates it must create a corresponding debt instrument. To decrease the monetary supply, the Treasury must pay off and retire the bonds it has already issued, issue new bonds and not spend the money it receives in return for them or not spend and hold in reserve, tax revenues that it takes in. When do you think any of these things is likely to happen? That is the "good" money scenario. The "bad" money scenario is that the bonds already issued, must default and be written off the books of the agency, corporation or foreign government which holds them. The flaw in this system, is that the US Treasury unilaterally controls, with the rubber stamp of Congressional approval, the amount of new debt and therefore money, created.

The reason for the current euphoria in and strength of the US Dollar market, has to do with the US Treasury's decision to prop up the failing US monetary system, by printing even more money and thereby creating even more debt. The US Treasury is not allowing irredeemable debt to fail but to be kept on the books of the institutions that hold them and allowing these institutions to use those debts as collateral to borrow even more money, from the government, which these institutions then use to pay off their obligations and stay afloat. They do this, of course, by issuing even more debt. The rest of the World is blackmailed into accepting this debt, because not to do so, would result in the collapse of the US Dollar. In return for this debt, they surrender US trade deficit dollars, which they know to be, in fact, worthless. This is nothing but a huge Ponzi scheme which results in the creation of huge new amounts of government debt that it has no chance of ever being able to redeem, except through the creation of even more money and its accompanying debt. It allows a continuing outflow of money into the economy, long after all meaningful wealth held by the American public has been exhausted. The government funnels this "funny money" into the economy by means of huge spending appropriations, for which they receive little or nothing in return. They even go so far as to send stimulus checks directly to each citizen. This is the ultimate in "free" money, bread and circuses, if you will.

I know that this sounds convoluted and stupid and that is exactly what it is. In order to keep this Ponzi scheme going, the US must convince the rest of the World to keep huge amounts of American Debt in "cold storage" and to accept as a reward for this, a postponement of the day of reckoning, for the American monetary system, when free markets determine the real value of the Dollar. What a depressing thought. Everybody goes along, because they hope they can get out with a better deal than the other suckers, before reality comes crashing down, just like in any Ponzi scheme.

As this situation progresses, the participants who stand to lose the most, will become more and more anxious. Eventually, they will start to panic and try to unload their American debt holdings, even at deep discounts. The end will ensue shortly thereafter.

Georgia On My Mind

What is it that is going on in Georgia along the coast of the Black Sea? I'm certainly no expert. It would seem that two semi-autonomous regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazan, would like to be more autonomous. This desire leads them to be played as pawns in a larger political game between Russia and Georgia. It isn't the first time. What will happen to these fine people? The lives of pawns are cheap. Many of them will die. There were never many of these proud, tribal people. When this episode is over there will be fewer, they will be no freer than they were before and probably less.

It's nice to think that everybody gets a break sometime but it's just not true. These people are screwed. They have been for thousands of years. They will be until the last one of them is dead, scapegoated in the wars of other, larger powers.

Fever Dreams of Plenty

A month ago, oil was at its highest price, ever. Today the conventional wisdom is that the commodity boom is over and oil is on the way back to $60 a barrel. Even at $60 a barrel, there will be windfall profits for the oil producers with established fields, with cheap extraction and transportation. Unfortunately, to supply the World with all the oil it needs, a significant amount of production will have to come from sources that are not low cost. Shale, sands, deep water, Arctic, small deposits in remote locations, high tech stripping of existing, depleted fields and the demand for oil will increase, not decrease, in coming years. Will the oil companies and cartels subsidize the high cost sources with the low, in order to supply the World with a mid priced product, in the amount that is sufficient to its needs?

Get fuckin' real. A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil and costs the same, no matter where it comes from or how much it cost to extract.

Wheat and corn are high volume crops that the World depends on. They are also high tech. They require fertilizer, pesticides, cultivation and increasingly, genetically modified seed, that must be purchased yearly from the big biotech cartels. If prices for the major food grains stay low, farmers will switch to less cost intensive crops, safflower, rape seed and sunflower but it is wheat and corn that the World hungers for. Will food grain prices stay low.

Get fuckin' real. People will pay what they must to eat.

If Third World economies are going to grow, thereby providing jobs and sustenance for their growing populations, they need to continue to industrialize. They need metals, rare and common, in huge quantities. Most of the easily mined metals are already above ground. Getting the rest will require lots of energy. The World's population is nearing 7 billion, most of them live in the Third World. Do you think they're just going to starve themselves to death, while trying to return to a mode of existence that the populations of their countries have outgrown?

Get fuckin' real. People, all people will do what they must to survive.

The Western World is sick and in its fever dream, it believes that keeping its economy afloat on the sea of a constantly expanding money supply and artificially forcing prices lower will allow it to return to it's days of ease and empire .

Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad

As the Fundo Fascist's dreams of an enduring Islamic Terrorist Bogeyman fade away, like the star and crescent into the pale light of dawn, they reach farther and farther into the realm of improbability, for domestic threats with which to whip up support for the dictatorship of the Baptocatholic Zionist coalition, that they wish to inflict upon our hapless nation.

More and more they target, if not exactly benign, certainly less than fearsome opponents and try to imbue them, in the eyes of the public, with an animosity that is overstated and a threat that just isn't there. Blood thirsty abortionists, stalking the streets for preborn innocents, to rip from their mother's wombs. Deranged global warming proponents, seeking to force us back into a hunter gatherer society, sheltered in solar cell roofed mud huts, situated squalidly in the midst of malignant wind farms. Maniacal animal rights activists, slaughtering white coated cosmetic testers and setting loose slavering hordes of squirmy, tail wagging puppies and soft, fluffy bunnies. Little old ladies in pink T-shirts, menacing our armed forces recruiters and the flower of our youth, who yearn to defend the nation. The list goes on and on. My personal favorite, Cossack like hordes of Lycra clad bicyclists, led by their bandit prince, "Lance" Armstrong, hugely tumescent from injections of ungodly androgens, mounted on their alloy framed, ten speeds of death, blocking traffic lanes and entrapping helpless soccer moms, plucking them from their stalled SUVs, making off with the poor dears and their rolley polley broods, to be defiled cruelly and sold in the swarming slave markets, that spring up each Summer, along the route of the fabled Tour de France.

What a fuckin' riot.

Who's a Liar ?

In a nutshell, what Ron Susskind says in his new book is that Bush/Cheney had George Tenet's CIA forge a document that purported to show Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This document was then leaked to newspapers in London and used as a basis for the American invasion. He further states that MI6 and Tony Blair knew the contents of the document to be untrue.

It is pointless to argue the validity of what Susskind has written. Those dim witted stalwarts that still support the war, will say he lies. Those who have come to despise GWB and his unilateral foreign wars of aggression, don't need to be convinced of such a thing. Susskind's revelations simply validate already held assumptions, that Bush/Cheney lies at every turn.

The Bush administration, CIA and George Tenet are all busy issuing angry and outraged denials and vilifying Susskind. Tony and MI6 are saying nothing. Once again, doesn't prove a thing, except that even in corruption and decline the British have more class than GWB, even in his own imagination, even on his best day.

Justice Prevails

I see that Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's sometime driver, was convicted by a military tribunal at Guantanamo, Cuba, of providing material support for terrorism. What a great victory for the Bush administration, in their Global War on Islamofascist Violence. After seven years, they finally tortured the truth out of him. This is, they say, no different than what was accomplished at the Nuremberg trials, after World War II.

In history class, I must have dozed though the part where they convicted Hitler's colonotherapist, Eva Braun's cabana boy, Mussolini's podiatrist and Goering's cosmetic stylist, of crimes against humanity.

My Bad.

WUAZZAT ???

You don't have to be some kind of Indian scout to read the signs on Wall Street today. Crude oil is plummeting and taking the precious metals with it. The base metals have been falling for a few months now and are extending their losses. Agricultural commodities have also been falling since the Third World food shortages last Spring and continue to do so. The equities markets are up today but have given up 2-3 years of price gains in the last year and most companies are either losing profitability or already in the red. Residential real estate continues to plummet, with no buyers looking and no loans available as thousands of houses go into foreclosure monthly. Commercial real estate is not much better and deteriorating. Unemployment is rising with no sign that new employment opportunities are even on the horizon. GM and Ford are demanding that the Federal government give them 25 billion dollars to retool their plants even as they lay off most of their remaining employees. Big players on Wall Street are demanding a short term interest rate cut to 1%. The only real growth sectors are the vulture funds that are buying up failed assets at pennies on the dollar and will sift though them over the coming months and years separating the wheat from the chaff.

Every indication that we are seeing is screaming the onset of deflation. Cash will be King. Prices of goods and services will fall. A depression like 1929 is brewing.

Do you believe this? I don't either. Something else entirely is going to happen.

Why all the Hatred and Gratuitous Obscenity?

Lefty web sites can be informative but let's face it, most of what you see on political blogs, left or right is derivative at best. It isn't very often that you find original thought or primary reportage. I try for originality of thought but really, I'm not all that bright and since I don't much go anywhere, my capacity for primary reportage is limited to my little corner of suburbia. Oh well, we all do what we can.

Lefty culture in America has been in decline since the '60s. Its adherrents have aged badly and sunk into impotency. There is still plenty of blame and outrage but precious little naked hatred couched in gratuitous obscenity, which has always been one of the Left's proudest traditions. The fundo fascists and neocon bulletheads have no problem with naked hatred and obscenity is an integral part of their core being.

Soon after starting this blog, I decided that there needed to be more balance on the left side of the blogosphere, requiring that I go easy on the pain and outrage and ramp up the obscenity laced hatred. Besides that, it lowers my blood pressure and really makes me feel good. Since I have almost no regular readers and the average visit is in the low, single digit second range, that's an important consideration.

Enjoy the blog!

Skulking Racist Rat Bastards

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There's Your Answer. But....

When an economy contracts, people stop spending money. Goods and services that people normally consume then go unused and prices eventually go down to a level at which people are enticed to continue consumption. As prices come down, the value of money is effectively increased. This is deflation.

If the government decides to fight a contracting economy by adding to the amount of money in circulation, that is called inflation. Governments do this by spending more on government services than they take in on tax and other revenues. Loaning out money at interest rates that are less than the lowest estimates of current inflation also is a way that the government can add large amounts of new money to the economy. More money circulating means people have more money to spend on goods and services and prices go up. They hope that the increase in monetary supply will stimulate the economy and it will expand by more than can be explained simply by the addition of more money into the economy.

There is no mystery as to what is happening in the economy today or for the last fifty years. There has been continuing, substantial, inflation. The government would like to say that this is not true, especially now that the American economy has reached a crisis point on so many fronts, mortgage defaults, bank failures, energy availability, budget deficits, disintegration of the manufacturing sector, international trade imbalances, rising unemployment and decreasing real income to name a few.

You only have to ask yourself, "Is my dollar worth more or less?"

There's your answer.

Remember, inflation is not always a totally bad thing. If the government adds enough money to the economy so that people can easily pay off their mortgages, banks will stop failing and the prices of houses will start to appreciate. Likewise, if they continue to add money to the economy, the debt that the American government owes becomes immaterial. If this happens though, several other systemic problems will arise. These problems may be worse than the original ones.

New Lamps For Old

When times get tough, people grasp at straws and want to believe in simplistic fairytale fixes to problems that took a long time forming and for which there are no easy answers.

For months now, I have been hearing on the street and reading in the tabloid press, references to an emerging technology that would allow the generation of power using water as fuel. Sometimes I hear it as a modification of the internal combustion engine, sometimes as a fuel cell technology. In each case, the motor vehicle is billed as the primary beneficiary of this technology. Everybody desperately wants to be able to drive as much as they want, at little or no cost. If such a process were possible, it would transform all aspects of life on the planet and shift the balance of World trade and power. Ocean vessels could use the medium upon which they travel for fuel. Anyplace a well could be dug or that has a natural source of water, would have an unlimited source of power for human industry and habitation.

I have yet to read anything that would lead me to believe that the generation of power using water as some type of "fuel" would be possible. It would be nice if some cheap, easy and non polluting alternative to the use of fossil fuels was available to us at this point. Popular excitement would be warranted if it was. I'm not saying such a thing would be impossible. What I do think is that if such a thing were on the horizon, or even being researched, there would be articles in all the mainstream print and video media and there are not.

Now we get to the part of the post where I show how stupid I am. As far as I know water, H2O, is a simple oxidized compound. Energy has already been released, when the hydrogen and oxygen were bonded together. To break the hydrogen and oxygen apart would cost energy. If we came up with a way to use a readily available free source of power, like sunlight, to break the chemical bonds of stable compounds and initiate a relatively complex series of chemical reactions that release large amounts of useful energy, that might solve our energy problems. It would be nothing less than the technological equivalent of photosynthesis and the Kreb's cycle combined. I don't think that solar energy technology is anywhere near that stage.

I try not to scoff and act the curmudgeon when being told, again, that next year we can all buy cars that run on water but it's hard.

Don't Worry! The FDIC Has Got It Covered.

Another small bank, this one in Florida, was announced to be dissolved by the FDIC. Once again, they waited until Friday, after the stock markets closed, to make the news public. This is a small bank, with assets of a little more than a quarter billion dollars. The FDIC was able to sell off about sixty million of assets. It is left holding 200 million in questionable assets that are not currently marketable. It will make good most of the deposits.

This is better than I thought. Last week there were two banks and a much greater loss involved. I thought there might be several this Friday and a much bigger drain on the FDIC's pool of reserves.

Even at this reduced rate of failure, the FDIC's money will not last long. It's OK though, the printing presses at the Treasury stand ready to take up the slack. What deficit? Wood pulp, linen, green ink, we got plenty of money!

Neither a Borrower or a Lender Be

I'm no big booster of the banking industry. They gave out a lot of unrealistic loans and packaged them into collateralized debt instruments. They sold off the ones they could and kept the ones they couldn't at virtually no cost to them, then used those to leverage even more debt. There were enough extra fees both paid by the borrower up front and folded into the loan itself to make that alone profitable enough to sell off the loans real cheap but the borrowers were not innocent victims and the criminality of the lenders does not make it so.

I know people who are going to lose their houses. They only come in two flavors. The first kind bought way more house than they could afford. They got loans for very little or nothing down. The payments were never amortized and often didn't even cover the interest accruing on the mortgage, making the principal, on which often high rates of interest are charged, larger with each passing month. These people never planned to keep the houses they purchased, their plan was simply to accrue equity in the house through rising market appreciation. They planned to then sell the house before the mortgage reset or the balloon payment was due. Many planned to do this in order to gain enough money to make a down payment on a more modest house, condo or even a mobile home that they could afford. The other flavor are those who purchased homes they could afford but got caught up in a vicious circle of refinancing in order to subsidize a lifestyle that they could not afford. In the end, they too owned a house on which they owed way more than they could afford to pay.

The borrowers and lenders are equally culpable. No one should be bailed out. The Republicans want to bail out the bankers. The Democrats want to bail out the borrowers. It looks like we are going to do both. It is reprehensible

I Like Newspapers But They No Longer Like Me

Los Angeles has always been more than just a city. It totally dominates the life of all the people that dwell in the basin that is formed by the Southern rift of the Tehachipis and Western slope of the San Gabriel Mountains to the Sea and South to San Diego County. It anchors the first and still the largest suburban megapolis.

For a century the city had a newspaper that matched it and documented its life, day by day, The Los Angeles Times. The Times may not ever have been renowned as one of the World's great newspapers but if you lived here in the great basin, it was almost indispensable.

It was famous for its girth, a bloated daily missive, with several sections, even on Saturday and home delivery was relegated to immigrant men in old pickup trucks or sedans with the backseats removed, frames sagging under the weight of the load, rather than earnest young paperboys with bags on bikes. The advertising supplements alone would have been too much for boys on bikes. The Times had sports, business, the movie industry, city hall and local society covered. They had bureaus in major cities around the World, correspondents that went to the hot spots, as well as writers covering the action in Sacramento, Washington, New York and other American regional centers. Over the years editorial policy shifted right, left and center but the opinions delivered were always diverse and thought provoking.

At my house, growing up, we always got the LA Times as well as the local daily. As an adult I continued the practice. Even though it is easier, more effective and efficient to get the news online, there is something about sitting down with the newspaper in the morning that is satisfying, even if it is only satisfying a habit.

Over the years, newspapers have been losing circulation and with circulation, advertising. Profits thinned out. Even well established, capitalized and mature monoliths like the LA Times began to suffer. Budgets were cut. News bureaus were shrunk, departments merged and deleted. The paper got smaller, even as subscription and news stand prices increased. The last member of the Chandler family, that had owned the paper for generations, who had taken an active interest in the management of the organization, became infirm, retired and died.

A few years ago, the remaining family members sold the paper to the Chicago Tribune. Soon after that, the Tribune merged with another newspaper publisher and all the time, circulation and advertising continued to decline. I continued to subscribe, partly out of loyalty and partly because I believed that without newspapers to post the news online, the quality of information available would degrade.

This week the Times announced further cuts in editorial staff and mergers in departments. I think I'm through. It isn't so much the decrease in size that I mind so much but somewhere along the way the paper has lost the literary flavor that made it an LAlien institution. I will soon cancel my subscription. I may take the Orange County Register. It was founded by R.C. Hoiles, a famous Right Wing nut and progenitor of the John Birch Society but has moderated in the decades since his demise and the truth be told, it has always offered better local Orange County news, sports and entertainment coverage. I may just pick up the OC Weekly, an alternative news throw away with surprisingly good local content. Eventually, news is going to have to be generated by some entity besides newspapers. I think they may be a lost cause.

Pretty Good Head Start

A lot of the people that like Obama REALLY like him. Almost nobody really likes McCain. Obama is pimping change. McCain just offers more of the same and things are as bad as they've been in quite some time. It might seem like Obama has a pretty good chance. I'm not so sure.

About 30% of potential voters still support Bush and his administration's vision for America unreservedly. Probably 30% would never even consider voting for a President with African heritage. There is a strong overlap in these groups but probably not too much more than 50%. This means that McCain has 45% of the vote pretty much locked up, even if nobody really wants him to be President.

That's a pretty good head start.

My Cat Snores

I picked up a cat at the pound several years ago. I got him at the urging of an old Swedish cat rescue lady who had gotten him out of the apartment of a schizophrenic woman who only fed him when she thought about it and tended to spend a lot of time locked up in local rubber rooms anyway. The old Swedish lady was going to keep him but she already had 15 cats and this one had problems sticking up for himself. He is a very unusual looking cat, brindled with orange stripes, spots and bullseyes. He's not hammerheaded and crosseyed, like a Siamese but does have a long foxey snout and huge wind scoop ears, with little beady golden eyes that burn like copper colored coals in the dark. He was a little jittery at first but has turned into a pretty good cat. He's friendly with strangers and doesn't usually draw too much blood when he bites.

I think he's got some kind of wildcat mix breeding, not bobcat, I had one of those once. I think this one is part Servil. Cat breeders sell these under the name Savannah Cats and they are pretty common.

This cat sleeps about 18 hours a day, which isn't to unusual but when he sleeps he snores like a freight train. He snores so violently that he even wakes himself up. He tries to prop his head up so that he doesn't do it but as soon as he shifts position or flips over in his sleep it starts up again. I've never seen a cat that snores like this. I don't mind that much. I hardly ever step on him when he's sleeping on the floor in the dark. That's a plus. I also snore so loud, sometimes I wake myself up too.

Originally I started calling him Wheezer. I thought it was pretty appropriate. My wife thought it was too cruel. I don't think cats care what you call them but what the hell. We just call him Noodles, because when he's curled up he looks like a big heap of spaghetti and marinara sauce.

This is a pretty stupid thing to write about but he's over in a corner making noises like an overloaded router right now.

Go Down Mo' Town

The latest round of catastrophic news for American car makers comes from their financial subsidiaries. Detroit has long offered in house financing to capture extra profits from car buyers in the form of high interest car loans. They continued this strategy when leasing became popular, charging a fixed amount monthly, after an often exorbitant and add on fee laden down payment, for the use of a vehicle over a set amount of time. The amount of time that the lease agreement extends to is flexible. As car prices increased, over the years, in order to keep monthly payments under control, so did the length of the average lease. Currently, it is not uncommon for car leases to extend for five or even six years.

In the last year, as gas prices have increased. American automotive preferences have been rapidly changing. Pick-ups, vans and bloated SUVs, often powered by large displacement, gas guzzling, Detroit iron, are no longer coveted by the American commuter. The Big Three have found that there is no longer any market for their in house, previously leased vehicles. Even though they garner a more than fair return on the initial lease agreements, they rely on the resale of these vehicles for the lions share of profit. Since all of these companies are bleeding red ink and have been for decades, the loss of a previously lucrative revenue stream is not welcome news.

Chrysler has already announced that their financial arm will make no more leases. GM and Ford will almost certainly follow. The problem is that over the next several years, as current leases expire, these companies are going to have to write off huge losses on lease returns.

Maybe oil will return to $25 a barrel. Once he gets back to the Oil Patch, George Bush could make it happen, through sheer force of will.

Cave In

The craven, cowardly and deeply corrupt Bush administration's Mine Safety and Health Agency issued it's final reports on the disastrous collapse at the Crandall Canyon coal mining operation, that occurred last year. There was no way to cover up or whitewash what happened there because of the sheer magnitude of the damage and the corporate malfeasance that caused it. The bottom line is, they levied token fines on the mining company and there will be no criminal prosecutions. I hope the families of the dead miners sue the hell out of the company. That is the only way they can be made to pay now.

As far as I know, there is yet to be any regulation or restriction on retreat mining, to augment that which existed before the collapse of the mountain in Utah.

During a time when the exploitation of mineral resources in this country will undoubtedly soon be expanding, after a generation of decline, it is unconscionable that we don't do everything possible to safeguard the lives and health of the men who go down in the mines. Mining interests in this country have shown time and again that the only thing they respond to, other than profit, is harsh and punitive enforcement of penalties, for violation of the law.

Can't Get No

We are entering a time of great change. I'm pretty much clueless about it. It's not going to be my time, just goin' along for the ride. It will be interesting. Might be fun. A lot better than being dead. What isn't?

When I was a young person, in the 1960s, the iconic figures of the last great period of cultural and artistic awakening in America, that wild and turbulent decade following the war to end all wars, forty years before, were still prominent in the life and news of the times. Some had died. Some had become beloved elders. Some were reclusive shut ins. Some continued to live on as bewilderingly inappropriate caricatures of their former selves. None of them had any real continuing relevance. Nothing has changed.

Mick Jagger turned sixty five yesterday. He had a nice run. Paced himself. Prob'ly live to a hundred. Becoming a caricature is better than becoming a corpse.

Big Week

This last week has been a watershed in the history of America. One that will continue to shape events for decades to come.

This was the week that the Right reversed itself on the War in Iraq. Right Wing wisdom now dictates that the war is won. While nothing has changed on the ground, the continuing violence and political strife is now to be regarded as domestic and not of "terrorist" origin. Regardless of how elections go in the fall, here or in Iraq, we are now backing out of the conflict. Whether we are leaving according to a liberal timetable or honorably standing down as the Iraqis stand up, is pure semantics. The end result will be the same.

Bush gave up his quest for a positive legacy and is scuttling, crablike and in disgrace, toward the exit of his term. World leaders in the Middle East and Europe scrambled over each other to embrace Barak Obama, whether or not he is elected, as the man they regard to be the symbol of American leadership. This was a knife in George's back, from which he cannot recover.

Bush has been forced to reject his conservative principles and endorse a socialist bailout bill, that will rescue an American banking system robbed into insolvency, by the same greedy, capitalist, corporate nabobs that he counted on to lead the country into a new golden age of laissez faire economic growth. There was a stock market rally this week, not because of any good news or potential for a return to profitability in the business sector but simply because the Bush administration indicated it realized that the economy was in deep trouble and signaled it would begin to address the problem, rather than simply continue to state that everything will soon return to normal. The costs are going to be enormous and the men who are responsible will likely walk away to off shore sanctuary with billions but the costs of addressing the problems now are less than continuing to ignore them.

I do not expect that things will get better any time soon but any time the militant ignorance and stupidity of the fundo fascist Right, suffers a significant defeat, it is a good thing and a victory for the American public.

It's Friday Night. Do You Know Where Yor Money Is?

Two Western regional banks failed yesterday. Their losses will be subsidized by the FDIC. Over the weekend, their depositor's accounts will be transferred to a small banking subsidiary of a major insurance corporation, presumably one not in danger of failing itself. Under this arrangement, no depositors will lose any money but the taxpayers will assume responsibility for more bad debt than they are required to under FDIC rules. The reason they are doing this, is that it is unlikely they can liquidate any of these bank's loan portfolios currently. This way they will make good all of the approximately 3 1/2 billion dollars of deposits and hope they can get something for the banks assets at a later date. Much later. Or not.

Look for several more of these "stealth" bank failures weekly, in the coming months, as the Federal government tries to keep the collapse of the American banking industry under wraps. They are apparently only going to comment when one of the big boys goes tits up. Notice how they waited 'til Friday afternoon to leak out the word. Smart.

No use upsetting all those foolish Chicken Little types.

Amber Alert

The papers are full of another little 3 year old girl missing and presumed murdered. No one in her loving family even bothered to report her missing for more than a month, despite a lot of lame stories from the mother about her being with a "boyfriend" and the grand parents noticing a dead body smell in their daughter's car. The police haven't figured out what happened and the entire family seems to be clueless as to when and where this little girl disappeared. One neighbor reports the girl's mother borrowed a shovel about that time. There is a fresh slab of concrete poured in the grandparent's backyard. Nobody has talked to the boyfriend for a while. What a mess.

Whenever one or more of these little children disappear, there is often some kind of nasty, Republican coalition, fundo fascist connection. Whether it's a Christian cult, a mixture of methamphetamine, big tattoos and a Confederate flag fetish, an aging beauty queen who pimps out her little girl at bizarre, pre pubescent beauty pageants, or whatever, there always seems to be some aspect of bedrock, American cultural nationalism gone horribly bad involved. I wonder why ex-Feeb profiler Cliff Van Zandt, when they pull him out from whatever rock he crouches under to comment, on Fox News, never brings that up. It never seems to be the daughter of two fat, Maoist, lesbian, secular humanist, urban pioneers running a food co-op/abortion referral agency, in Ann Arbor, who ends up buried in some shallow grave in a trailer park, in the dead of night.

It kind of makes you wonder who the parents that really care about the well being of their children are.

New F-16s for Pakistan

The craven pig-dog Bush wants a quarter of a billion to upgrade Pakistan's fleet of fighter jets, to fight "terrorists". What a joke. The only use Pakistan has for F-16s with the latest avionics upgrades, is for a nuclear confrontation with India. Bush continues to be nothing but a bloated, diseased, lying scumbag.

Train Wreck

Irregardless of whether or not the US taxpayer is saddled with the bailout of FREDDY MAC and FANNY MAE, there are a slew of bank failures coming up. The economy will continue to contract as consumer spending decreases. Unemployment will continue to increase. The budget deficit will increase, as revenues decrease. Monetary policy will continue to be grossly inflationary even in the face of large scale wealth and debt destruction caused by a continuing cascade of defaulting debt.

The idea that falling commodity prices, led by a retrenchment in the price of crude oil, will spur a continuing advance in the equity markets is simplistic and not reality based. All of the equity markets around the World, not just in the US and EU are headed down, way down and soon. I watch the markets with the fascination of a young child with an unobstructed view of a fast freight headed for a broken trestle that is unseen by the hapless train crew.

Carnivorous Parrots

I read about a new genetic study done of common bird types released recently. A very interesting finding is that falcons are not really related to eagles and hawks at all but more closely related to parrots, than any other type of bird.

When I think about this, it makes a great deal of sense. There are a lot of peregrine falcons around where I live. They don't act that much like hawks or eagles. They thrive in densely populated human areas more easily. They hunt from an elevated perch rather than soaring around in the thermals, up high in the sky. They are more social and spend a lot of time cavorting with each other and seem to have a very strong pair bond. They make a lot of noise and seem to be calling out to each other. A lot of their activity seems to be just playing. I have heard that they are much more easily trained to hunt and much easier to control once trained than other raptors. Their wing spans are not so disproportionately wide as hawks, eagles and vultures and their tails are longer. Their beaks and talons are not so long. I'm not that much of a bird watcher but the peregrines are fun to have around. They also keep the crows from nesting in the eucalyptus. Now that I think of them as carnivorous parrots, they seem more friendly.

I'm pretty sure you couldn't teach one to talk, though.

It's Like "The Dawn Of The Dead", Only For Bankers

Equities in the banks that make up the financial sector of the American stock markets are shredding and sinking into sludge, like so much used toilet paper in the settling basin of a sewage treatment plant. Not even a week after President Bush brought out every one of his lick spittle cabinet heads to cheerlead a shaky suckers rally, financials look ready to lead the market into a new level of ever deeper lows.

A little later this morning, Hank Paulson, a treasury secretary who manages to be even more imbecilically optimistic than the previously most stupid holder of the office, Donald Regan, another blood sucking parasite who spent a generation stealing the meager savings of hard working pensioners, while running one of America's largest investment banking houses, will address the public. This is becoming almost a daily ritual for Hank. Who does he think he's kidding.

Hank will no doubt, once again, urge Congress to pass a bill that allows him to use freshly printed, mostly worthless, American dollars, to buy equally worthless banking shares, in order to allow the banks to redeem just as worthless unpaid debt, that they hold by the trillions of dollars. It's like some horribly diseased daisy chain of fiduciary malfeasance.

We should kill all the bankers. They are of no use and will only continue to lie and steal. It is the only life they know and understand. We could raffle off their palatial mansions, in all the best areas, to wealthy Arabs. Maybe they could be convinced to pay us off in money from a country where the currency is more stable, like Zimbabwe or Vietnam, instead of our own worthless specie.

Sometimes a Good Party Lasts Until the Cold Dawn of a New Day but then It's Time to Go Home

After having taunted Barak Obama into a trip to the American military hotspots in the Middle East, John McCain and the neocon bulletheads are reeling in shock and horror. American puppet leaders, PM Maliki in Iraq and President Karsai in Afghanistan have greeted Obama more warmly than ever they have the Decider since he declared "mission accomplished" and both have all but endorsed Obama for the position of leader of the free World and champion of democratic reform in their countries. The troops themselves, the ground pounding dogfaces, not the ring knocking, cock sucking, academy graduates who pimp the war for Bush-Cheney, love Obama. They are just as ready to get the hell out of there as the Iraqis and Afghans are eager to have them go. Mike Mullen seems a little out of sorts as regards Barry's Middle East visit but Davey P, who might want to be head of Joint Chiefs during an Obama Presidency, seemed more than happy to squire him around. Barry is no doubt better company than the Republicans geriatric suitor, with his failing intellect and rotting, cancerous face.

Barry is soon off to Europe, where he is wildly popular among a population that regards President Bush and rightly so, as the bestial heavy in a Fellini melodrama, come horribly and abusively to real life. Fearing another "Ich bien ein Berliner" moment, Condy's crew has managed to put the kibosh on a planned Obama speech before thousands, at the Brandenburg Gate. No matter. There are plenty of Iconic landmarks that Obama can use as a backdrop for the delivery of an inspirational stem winder to the European throngs.

It's turning out to be a good week for Obama. Thanks to the syphilitic operatives over at Republican Central, who managed to shake off their spirochete induced psychosis long enough to set it up.

Who Are They Trying To Kid?

The FDIC says that while INDYMAC has failed and will cost the tax payer billions and the depositors more billions, all the other banks are safe. If that was true, they wouldn't bother to say it. The SEC blames speculators for the bubble economies and the collapse of American corporate equities. Wall Street was founded and been run ever since by speculators, men who have no other profession than market manipulation and fleecing the rubes. There have been speculators ever since the first neolithic traders met with farmers at a commercial nexus to trade agricultural products for salt, trinkets, intoxicants and pussy. Hank Paulson says the economy will be recovered several months from now. He said the same thing several months ago. George Bush says there is no inflation. He says that the decrease in housing prices coupled with demand destruction caused by cooling World economies will cause deflation, requiring a continuation of policies keeping interest rates low and the money supply growing. He says this even though he maintains that World economies are not cooling and the real estate crisis is not serious. What do you expect? He is a retard.

The stock market had a little bounce last week. It wasn't much of a bounce but you take what you can get. You won't see valuations this high again until the dollar is worth a whole lot less. Take it as a gift and sell your stocks. You figure out what to do with the proceeds.

Who Are These Men That Speak For God? Do They Like Cats?

In a Protestant church in Massachusetts, in a ceremony not sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church, women were consecrated as priests. The Catholic hierarchy felt threatened enough by this, to issue an edict that these women are not priests and by this action excommunicate themselves from the church. What's going on? Why would they make a statement like this? It seems self evident that this is true.

The Catholic Church does not allow women priests. This ceremony did not take place in a Catholic Church, nor was it sanctioned by it. These are simply people expressing their own religious beliefs, other than and separate from the Catholic Church. While these people may see themselves as reformers, it is doubtful they see themselves as reformers of the church. More likely, they see themselves as societal reformers and founders of a new and better church, part of a protestant movement that has been going on in Western society for hundreds of years.

It is also true, that during this protestant period, the Catholic Church has undergone its own drastic changes, often in response to the changes wrought by various protestant groups and changes in society, as it becomes more amenable to the increasing autonomy demanded by the masses. So many changes in the Roman Catholic Church have been made, that the question can be asked, is the Roman Catholic Church really itself anymore? Many traditionalists in the church ask just that question and in response, have started their own churches, that they feel better exemplify the real institution of the church. Would we call these people protestants or something else?

Mankind's quest for understanding of spirituality is ongoing. The more that some religious groups try to say that they possess the only truth, the more dissidents arise to question and contradict those supposed truths. Who is to say they are wrong? Men who say they speak for God are rising all the time. People have a lot of choices as to what exactly God wants us to do. Now, apparently some within the World's community of women believe that they also have the right to speak for God. Who is to say they are wrong? Some old Bavarian poofter who travels about in red patent leather slippers and heavily brocaded satin mumus? It's a tough question and not one I have the answer to. People recognize the truth of God because it resonates with something inside them, not because of who says it. Different truths resonate with different people. Can there even be universal truths?

The Pope likes cats. Jesus certainly liked cats. Rome is full of cats. I bet the women who were consecrated as priests in Massachusetts like cats. I like cats. I don't trust people that don't like cats. Does this mean God wants us to like cats? I don't know. From everything I've heard, Satan is also real fond of cats. So where do cat haters go when they die? Where do cats go when they die? Do cats speak for God? If so, can they be priests? Man, religion is a hard thing.

We Were Frat Boys Once.....And Young

It's not necessary for Bush and his cronies to live in a free fire zone to gain some empathy for the victims of our military incursions in the Middle East. It's not necessary for their friends and family members to disappear in the night, gone forever, victims of violence, torture and ultimately death. It is not necessary for their wives and daughters to be raped and sodomized if ever they leave the family home without an armed escort but it would help.

Face facts. Bush and his friends grew up in clean, safe neighborhoods. They played Little league baseball and Pop Warner football. They went to expensive prep schools and were legacy admissions to the best colleges in America. Beautiful young girls were glad to marry them, knowing their lives would be secure and there would never be any money problems. Bush and his friends never struggled with past due bills, never worried about job security, benefits, health care or the next promotion. If they served in the military at all, it was in a cushy, stateside billet that might as well have been a corporate, junior executive internship.

The idea that these guys would use their power as leaders of the American people, to destroy whole countries and cultures, maim, rape and murder millions of people is inconceivable. How do we face the World community, after letting them do just that? This is not a small, repugnant act of sado-sexual hazing, done in some midnight frat house ceremony and snickered about for decades at corporate board meetings and around the washbasins in country club toilets. These are war crimes as callous and villainous, as have ever been perpetrated. Just because they are rich, from prominent families, educated at the best schools and willing to run the country, does not make them suitable successors to the honored founding fathers of this nation. America has erred grievously by placing trust in these men.

Simply replacing them in the positions of authority that they have so grossly abused, is not enough. Impeachment by Congress, civil or even criminal trials, here in this country, while maybe appropriate, are not sufficient. The crimes these men have perpetrated, were against foreign peoples. They must be turned over to international agencies for tribunal and if found guilty, the administration of justice.

Another Sucker's Rally

It's important to step back for a moment and think about what is happening in World markets today. Crude is dropping, while stocks, especially financials, are spiking in value.

When this sucker's rally is over, crude oil is going to have established a bottom, probably no lower than $120 a barrel. The Dow will leave this rally behind, almost certainly without having broken above 12,000. The fundamentals remain the same. Out of control inflation with trade and budget deficits that have never been higher. Ruinous, ongoing, multi trillion dollar, foreign wars. Mountains of bad debt. Rising unemployment and sinking real wages.

The heads of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and SEC, as well as the POTUS have been out this week, helping the pimps over at CNBC try to paint up and sell the tired old ass of this economy to the World. If this is the best they can do, we got a cold winter comming up.

Don't hide your valuables in your asshole when you load up your shopping cart and go for a refugee. George Bush will find them when he butt fucks you.

Yesterday, people were lined up around the block at IndyMac Bank branches all over SoCal, only to be told at the end of their wait, that they had lost substantial portions of their life savings. Bush-Cheney butt boys, Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson bent over for Congress while the master of mission accomplished went on TV and told the country that the economy was in fine shape and the dollar was the envy of the World. Hank is opening the floodgates of free money directly into the coffers of corporate America, while Benny is telling the widows and orphans that if they have lost all their money, it's because they didn't do their due diligence.

This morning the market is up, the dollar is up, bank shares are soaring, while oil, gold and other commodities are selling off. This proves that a sore and stretched out ass hole is prejudicial to the exercise of good judgement and plain old common sense. No politician ever made a mistake ass fucking the American public. What a sad World we live in. The meek may not inherit the earth but their dead, rotting bodies will certainly soon be fertilizing it.

Michael Yon and the True Beleivers Declare Victory in Iraq

Over at his site, Michael Yon is saying that the Iraq War is over.

What gets me about little cocksuckers like this, is that for the first four years of the Iraq War, they swore that everything was going great in Iraq and that the only problem was, that the people against the war at home, were traitors and cowards and by not "supporting the troops" were aiding and abetting the "terrorists", in Iraq. They swore, that the journalists who questioned the actions of the Bush administration and the American Generals were "phoning in" their stories from cocktail lounges in the "Green Zone". Never mind that there was never any reason for us to be in Iraq. Never mind that there was never any plan as to what to do with the Iraqis, after we had "liberated" them. It was only after the "Surge" had been announced, that these "Bush-Cheney" catamites admitted to any problem with our occupation in Iraq and then only the "Surge" could rectify the situation. No sooner had the "Surge" gotten underway than it was pronounced "working". Never mind that in the meantime, General Petraeus had put every bully boy, rapist, Son of Saddam insurgent, with an AK or RPG launcher, on a three hundred dollar a month retainer, thereby neutralizing the insurgency. Voila, al-Qaeda in Iraq defeated.

Now, of course, they feel empowered to declare that the War in Iraq is over, because only they have the insight to truly understand the mechanics of the conflict in Iraq. These people are scum. They are traitors to the United States. They use their status as veterans and journalists, to bring dishonor to the flag they once served under. The blood of every good man who died in Iraq under arms and every innocent Iraqi civilian, man, woman and child killed, can be laid at their feet. They dishonor the thousands of American men and women who served in good faith, without feeling the need to engage in lies and political subterfuge.

Burn in Hell, lying, traitorous, scum. Write your books. Collect your blood money. Bask in the notoriety of your own treachery.

We Are Now Officially At The Mercy Of Capitalist Looters

The bailout of FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC by the US Treasury today, marks a new era of depraved, cowardly, abuse of the American tax payer, by the government. Before this, we have been made to pay for wars, purchase shoddy goods and services, subsidize the wealth building of the investor class and otherwise spend our money on things we never needed and didn't ask for. Today, Hank Paulson began the transfer of money from the US Treasury, directly into the pockets of Wall Street investors, with no pretense that we receive anything for it. The only limit put on this folly is the amount of money his friend, Ben Bernanke, over at the Federal Reserve Bank can print.

If you have any money at all, even loose change in your pocket, spend it now. If you have any credit, max it out, then spend that. There is no hope. We are past the point of no return. The Republic must fall.

The Iraqi Government Wants US Military to Go Home

Nouri al-Maliki doesn't want to agree with the Bush administration on a treaty that would govern the activities of US military forces in Iraq, following the expiration of the UN charter authorizing intervention in Iraq, at the end of this year. He knows that the legislature would never vote to approve such a treaty and that it is an extremely unpopular issue among the voting public. Instead, he is calling for a timetable by which the US would begin to remove it's military from Iraq.

An especially sore point is the immunity from any consequences enjoyed by US contractors and servicemen for criminal acts committed while in Iraq. The Bush administration insists that it does not engage in war crimes in Iraq but the citizenry, who have endured the deaths of a million of their friends, family and fellow countrymen and the maiming, rape, torture, incarceration and displacement of millions more, know better.

What is the problem. Fuel up the troop ships and bring our forces home. Those fundo-fascist Americans that still believe that the Iraqis need help with the governance of their country are free to go there and help them, as private citizens. Perhaps they would even like to emigrate. I'm sure they would be welcomed in Iraq. We will try to get along without them back at home.

How Lame Is That Duck?

The Airlines don't use 747s much anymore. Even though they can carry hundreds of people, halfway around the World without refueling, they aren't fuel efficient. They are just too big, too heavy, to economically carry their own weight, as well as the passengers and freight and turn a profit. The purchase price and operating costs are just too prohibitive. The only thing they are really good for, is to be ostentatious.

They are preflighting and fueling up a 747 right now, with thousands of gallons jet fuel, outside of Washington, to take one drooling retard, to a series of meetings in Japan, with a group of men who are loathe to see him. What is the point of ostentation. The retard doesn't care. The men he meets with, will ignore him. We could send the retard off to Six Flags with a troop of Brownies, on a school bus, he would never know the difference and have a better time. It just doesn't make any sense.

Our country is deeply in debt. We are saddled with multiple, costly, foreign wars, on multiple continents against entities that the American pubic is not even clear who they are or why we are fighting them. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Columbia, to name a few. Taxes have been slashed and spending massively increased and not only for the wars. Every time you turn around, another spending bill passes and the President signs it. They're all good things, disaster relief, veterans care and education, health care for the aged. The problem is, there is no money. The retard solves this problem by printing money. This worked for a little while, until there was so much new money floating around, that it became largely worthless. It will soon be the case that no amount of money will be enough to pay for the obligations incurred by government. Unfortunately, it will also be the case that no amount of money will be enough to pay for the food and fuel that the American people have become accustomed to consuming.

When that happens, people will begin to take notice. Man, we are really fucked.

Never Speak Ill Of the Dead, Rest In Peace Jesse

The reason I respected Jesse Helms, is that he never lied about what he was. Modern fundo-fascist politicians and religious leaders, hide the fact that they are racist, sexist, religiously intolerant, self loathing xenophobes, behind a carefully constructed screen of soothing rhetoric. Jesse never did that. Good for him.

Now that he's dead, I hope he has joined the rest of his hateful, backstabbing, blood brothers, someplace where they can all be together, free from the polluting influence, of those they so despised and that the rest of his ilk, still above ground, join him soon.

Crimes Against Property

An old, fat man, with an habitual drinking problem, shot in the back and killed two much younger, illegal alien men, as they were running away, after exiting a neighbors home through a window, carrying a bag of stolen loot. He did this after having called 911 and being advised not to confront these men. He did it even though there was a plain clothes police detective parked in front of the house, having heard the police dispatchers alert, with further police in route and helicopters overhead. He did it even though both burglars were unarmed and in no way threatened his person or property. He did this in the State of Texas, knowing that the law had recently been changed to allow him to carry out this act, under sanction of law.

The right to possess fire arms brings with it responsibility. These two men were robbing an empty house and that is a crime but a crime against property only. If the residents of the house had been there at the time, then it would have been home invasion and the use of deadly force would have been justified. They were not. It was not. Maybe you think it's stupid to get all sentimental about the lives of what are probably two irredeemably habitual felons. The fact is though, they might as well have been two barefoot boys named Huck and Tom, stealing a pie off a kitchen window sill. Shooting them in the back would have been just as legal in the State of Texas.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be able to have whatever weapons they feel are appropriate, to protect themselves and their property. What I'm saying is, they better be able to justify their actions in a satisfactory manner, after having committed homicide. Taking a life is a serious thing. It can't be undone. There is no compensation that is adequate for it.

The State of Texas decided not to prosecute this man, for these killings. I wonder what they would have done if it was Huck and Tom he killed,

The Scumbag Never Falls Far From The Soiled Mattress

We could spend a lot of time asking ourselves how it came to be that we elected a President and Vice President that are treasonous, cowardly scum, men who would declare unilateral war on nations that did us no harm and posed us no threat. We could likewise ask how we elected a Congressional majority who sat silent while these wars were embarked upon. We could ask ourselves how America became involved in a program of mass incarceration of suspected terrorists and sympathizers and the routine use of torture during the interrogation of these unfortunates, the genesis of which started not in the heat and frustration of combat but in the calm and measured environment of the West Wing of the White House. We can ask ourselves how it came to be that we have given up so many of our civil rights, every time we use a telephone, send a letter, use public transport or enter a public building.

Questioning these things is an exercise in uselessness. The fact is that all of these things have come to pass. They are now the accepted way that the United States does business. Most of the World and large portions of our own population now believe that the highest officials of our government are under no obligation to act with honor or honesty. Large numbers of our citizens now believe that their armed forces and intelligence operatives have a right, indeed an obligation, to torture combatant prisoners. Our Armed Forces believe it too and that's what will be taught at our National military academies and officer training programs. Likewise, civilian surveillance and communications monitoring programs are now accepted by the public and as a useful tool to be used by authorities. They will not be stopped. The right of public egress and privacy are gone forever. You can codify in law anything you want about freedom but public practice and usage are the standards by which we live our lives.

Gold Fever

Everybody says, don't buy gold. It's had its run. There's nothing left. Better to just sit on the sidelines with cash and bide your time. I say bullshit, give me the gold. I can have some made into jewelry for my wife. I can bury some in the backyard. I can have some made into prosthesis' for the teeth, rotting in my head. You can't do that with paper monry.

Lying Liers that Ly do OK, it's Cheaters that Never Prosper

The Republican administration and all the slick, Wall Street criminal bunco artists that they front for, have been touting the scenario that the American economy has been in a mild slowdown for the last year, just taking a little breather. No recession. No depression. Nothing to worry about.

From the very beginning of the slowdown last Summer, through the ensuing Fall, Winter and Spring the script has called for a robust recovery, starting in the third quarter of this year. You kept hearing it over and over again, as if repeating it could make it true. A lot of investors have been buying into weakness in the equities markets, in the belief that things will turn around this Summer, as Q3 unfolds and they will reap profits.

Well, Q3 is here. This morning 29 of the Dow 30 Industrials are down to a composite tune of 200+ points and falling. Major, multi year support levels have been breached. Earnings are bad. Unemployment is rising. Consumers are spending all their money on staple food items and gasoline. Inflationary pressures are exploding, even in the face of a massive decapitalization in real estate and banking, with trillions in value disappeared.

Individuals and portfolio managers alike, are left without an approved script to follow for the next leg of the bunco/pyramid scheme that Wall Street has degenerated into or maybe always was.

Tough luck, suckers! Bush and his friends are leaving town in a few months. Their family trusts have long ago liquidated holdings in American corporations. They will come back later and scavenge through the post apocalyptic wreckage for bargains but that will be far in the Mad Max future, that the rest of us will have to live through.

Quote the Maven, "Nevermore"

I don't know if anyone noticed yesterday but there was a blatant attempt by someone, probably the government, to manipulate the commodities market into crashing. Just as the Saudis announced that they were prepared to increase oil production to accommodate market demand, someone dumped millions of ounces of gold onto the market, over the course of only a few minutes.

In response, the oil market barely blinked and continued to rise. The gold market was knocked back about twenty bucks an ounce but not down to the lower limits of the recent trading range, then bargain hunters began picking up the pieces and moving the market forward. Tomorrow, when the Fed declines to reverse any of the recent cuts in interest rates, look for commodities markets to begin a major leg upward in prices, with oil, gold and cereal grains heading to new highs and the equities markets to be breaking below major support levels, with the Dow heading for territory below 11,000.

Dead Man Walking

General Motors has announced initial price increases on it's 2009 models of 3.5%. Concurrently, they announced plans to shutdown four more plants and drastically cut production at remaining US assembly plants.

Any of you lusting after that new Aztec wagon or Sunbird convertible, better snap one up quick, because GM will be out of business by Christmas. There are not enough car buying World War II veterans left, to keep them in business.

George Carlin, Dead at 71

George Carlin had a heart attack and died, here in LA yesterday. The guy was a comic genius. It is impossible to categorize his contributions and achievements. He played a major role, over the last 50 years, in molding the way people view the American society they live in, how they interact with each other and the language they use to do that interacting. The language that we used to liberate and liberalize ourselves was, in no small part, language that he made it acceptable to use. He will probably be cremated and there will likely be no public memorial ceremony or funeral.

Compare and contrast the length and depth of Carlin's contributions to those of Tim Russert, another public figure who recently died of a heart attack. Think about the difference in the public accolades each will have received, before they exit the passing parade. Carlin would have seen the joke there and laughed as loud as anyone.

The first I remember him was from the hippy-dippy weatherman skits, in maybe 1962. They weren't nearly as satirical as the stuff that would become his trademark, almost naively sweet. They were funny though and completely different.

Carlin is one of those guys who inspires us all to greater exercise of wit but can never be replaced.