Archive for the ‘Recession’ Category

A colleague and I had a mildly intense but friendly conversation about politics the other day. I’m hoping I disabused him of few ridiculous notions but I doubt it. Maybe I gave him pause on one or two matters. I may never know. Interesting guy. Very bright, very calm and very friendly.

I really like my little department at the bank. It doesn’t suck that Skippy’s gone.

So, same colleague tells me he agrees with Warren Buffet’s remarks this morning. I wasn’t aware of what he said but told my friend that I thought Buffet was a bright guy. He characterized what he’d heard as Buffet saying that the Obama administration should limit it’s focus to issues economic and stop using the power of majority to ram a liberal agenda down the throat of congress.

I thought to myself, less than fifty days in, and we’re being accused of precisely what Republicans have been audaciously guilty of for the last eight years, plus twenty.

Oh the humanity.

Here’s what Buffet said:
Warren Buffett, an Obama supporter, famously described the economic crisis as an “Economic Pearl Harbor” — but now says Congress, especially the GOP, has failed to adopt an appropriately unified “Dec. 8th” mentality. -politico.com

“The minority really do[es] have an obligation to support things that are clearly designed to fight the war in a big way,” Buffett said. “I think the Republicans have an obligation to regard this as an economic war and realize you need one leader… I think the [Democrats] should not use it … to roll the Republicans.” -firstread.msnbc.msn.com

I asked my friend if he thought Obama’s executive order today lifting the ban on federal funding for stem cell research was an example of the gratuitous Liberal agenda. His answer was, “absolutely”.

In other news:
The daughter of Republican Sen. John McCain called President Obama “the hippest politician around” – then complained that being a member of the GOP is “about as edgy as Donny Osmond” and blasted conservative commentator Ann Coulter as “offensive” and “radical.” -nypost.com

This sort of betrayal pleases me to no end. I wonder how long before she’s forced to walk it back a little. It won’t be long before daddy starts to forget.

Doesn’t Meghan McCain have a big rack?

Also, the practise of organized religion is on the decline. Some 86% indentified themselves as religious in 1990. These days it’s around 75%. Salient point here is that’s a long way to go. We need it closer to fifty-fifty. I’d feel better.

Last but not least is Our Man’s signing of the executive order today. Not only is it an economic opportunity and therefore part of a much bigger picture, but it’s intended to help “restore scientific integrity in government decision making.” -whitehouse.gov

“Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation. It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.” – President Barack Obama -whitehouse.gov

See what I’m saying?

Drinks for my friends.

Just recently Our Man announced another welcome reversal from Dumbya era policies.

Along with closing Gitmo, ending torture, bringing troops home, allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to expire and no more raids on medicinal marijuana, Obama announced a lifting of the ridicilous restrictions on government funded stem cell research.

Hoorah and in your face bitches.

I’m looking at change. I’m looking right at it.

So today, Sunday, this tool who’s been on my radar for some time, Eric Cantor (Republican Whip) had this to say, “Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job No. 1. Let’s focus on what needs to be done,” – CNN

Hey Cantor, how is this a distraction? Why are the economy and potentially life saving scientific techniques or methodologies mutually exclusive? What kind of simpleton are you? One who’s so clueless as to imagine himself to be fighting for a baseless retarded principle? Or, so cynical as to pander impudently to right wing Christian whackjobs by fomenting ignorance and fear?

No secret that Cantor has been one of the most shrill Republican voices pissing on any and all of Obama’s economic proposals and policies.

White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes: “Advances with regard to science and technology help advance our overall national goals around economic growth and job creation,” she said, adding, “I think anytime you make an effort to try and separate these pieces of the puzzle, you’re missing the entire picture.” – CNN

Well said.

Cantor also said: “Frankly, federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research can bring on embryo harvesting, perhaps even human cloning that occurs,” Cantor said. “We don’t want that. That shouldn’t be done. That’s wrong.” – CNN

Fear, ignorance and proof that Cantor either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or at the very least, doesn’t think Americans do.

Government has very little judicature to be palavering over the morals or ethics of scientic research, save maybe for defense and national security. See how I just bitch slapped you with the irony? Did you like it? Call me daddy.

We would do well to remember that history provides plethora example of scientists and philosophers jailed or executed for telling what they knew to be the truth. We are not the center of the universe. We are not the center of the solar system, the sun is. The earth is round. Germs are really small.

I will paraphrase the local NBC affiliate coverage by telling you that opponents of stem cell research fear the destruction of human embryos and that the government will now be responsible for loss of human life.

Here are the motherfucking facts. We’re not even talking about embryos, we’re talking about blastocysts. I microscopic ball of about thirty cells, four or five days fertilized by in vitro fertilization only. In vitro fertilization is about numbers. The more eggs sperm conquer the better the odds. What I’m trying to tell you is that the blastocysts that don’t get used are discarded. Thrown away. The ones we want for research, end up in some strange receptacle with a scary symbol on it.

The entire controversy is over what has been biological waste until tomorrow.

Eric Cantor, fucktard that he is would have you believe that he’s not the one doing the distracting. Methinks he doth protest too much. Me also thinks he’s a jackbooted, lockstep Republican who’s just stupid enough to not see his base eroding.

Why behave in public if you’re living on a playground? – DLR

Two names: Bill Frist and Rick Santorum. Mumbling stumbling fucks, welcome to the clubhouse Mr. Cantor, sodas are free.

Drinks for my friends.

My question is, what’s wrong with this picture?

So we’re in the middle of an economic clusterfuck. Um, no shit.

The housing bubble erupted like a volcanically abscessed cow and deflated into a crater with a bottom below sea level. Tragic. I saw it coming. Twenty five percent annual appreciation in home values was unsustainable. Duh. I understood housing sales and speculation to be the last pole standing underneath the tent of our economy.

I was at the table, bought a brand new house in ’94, sold it in ’96 just after I no longer had to worry about capital gains. In and out at the last minute. I was lucky.

The consistent erosion in value of the dollar against foreign currency was troubling. Dragster fueled gold prices were an omen. Unemployment began to walk up a precipitous ladder. Then there was a deficit ballooning like a hemorrhoid after a dinner of habaneros, jalapenos and horseradish. A senseless war we couldn’t begin to afford.

I was and am a salesman, I talk to people all over the country everyday. I saw it coming.

Jon Stewart made a hysterically funny point tonight about how CNBC, a self proclaimed financial network, just missed it. Didn’t see it coming just like Alan Greenspan didn’t. I don’t know about CNBC, but Alan Greenspan is a liar.

How is that? You know, Greenspan turns into an idiot overnight and entire network devoted to the economy has fiscal Down Syndrome?

I predicted it. Read my old blogs. Am I a genius? One could argue it as a purely academic exercise, but that’s not the point. I am as clueless as the next Joe in most matters financial.

Shhhh! We’re hunting wabbit. See what I’m saying?

Here’s my point. We’ve got 90,000 troops in Europe, almost a hundred thousand in Asia and various amounts in twenty or thirty other countries. We’ll be spending well north of six hundred billion this year for “defense”. More than ten times as much as any other country.

Economies expand and contract. America’s economy is contracting at about the same rate as that of the planet. Our actual vulnerability in terms of national security are more congruent and even symbiotic with world economic fortune than any other facet of anything we do here on the blue marble.

Time to reckon and then contract. Not saying we should get all xenophobic at the bacchanal. How about we shrink some of our imperialistic aspirations around the globe? America must sacrifice her codependent love affair with the military industrial complex. If we don’t, we’ll fold like the Soviet Union for the same reasons and in the same way. Trust me.

It will be chaotic, noisy and there will be food lines.

Drinks for my friends.

This is crazy. World markets are convulsing. Lose the image of a spasm. This is flopping on the floor foaming at the mouth crazy epileptic shit. Jam something in the maw to prevent tongue swallowing and pull the furniture away, it’s a grand mal baby.

Dumbya shows up on television like a deer in the headlights. This shit is way over his head.

In concert, banks of the world moved yesterday to simultaneously slash prime by half a percent. That’s five hundred basis points, as a neophyte banker I can tell you that’s a shitload of lucre. Money is traded on a hundredth of a percentile. This level of cooperation is not just huge, it’s completely without precedent.

Still hemorrhaging though. Bleeding badly. The Dow down a hundred eighty nine yesterday and over six hundred seventy points today.

The bottom is around eighty three hundred. Trust me. I have it on good authority. That’s a scary number. I know people who’ve lost everything already. They have no choice but to stay in.

This crisis will lay a finger on every single one of us. If it hasn’t already.

Truth is it has, and it’s not done.

American industry cannot lose forty percent of it’s value without far more than a ripple breaking across the country. It’s a tsunami that will wipe people out. I doubt America will end up a third world nation, but we’ll a see a huge increase in the homeless and poverty in general. Get ready for desperation and panic. Soup lines.

Lots more ugliness on the way.

I almost don’t care what you know. I know what I know. This prick Dumbya inherited a surplus and a balanced budget. We were fine, we were golden. Golden. The thing is, his eyes are way too close together. You can tell by looking at him that he’s stupid. Listen to him and it’s obvious he’s a dumbass.

The proof is in the now bloody pudding. It’s the biggest mess we’ve ever seen. At war in two countries for now at least, and an economy literally eroding by the day. By the day. The American domino keeps on giving as we see world markets slide with increasing velocity towards a pileup that portends to clog arteries major and minor. Asian markets are shitting pants as we speak.

If you voted for Bush, you’re an idiot bordering on asshole. If you intend to vote for McCain, you’re an ingnorant idiot, stupid asshole motherfucker. Despicable and dumb. Clueless and wortheless. The mouth breather at the pump unable to remember a zipcode. When I see you, I hope you haven’t procreated.

I don’t doubt you’re boring.

Certainly, this should command our attention by delivering a focus onto the crisis at hand in context of the Presidential race. McFuckstain and Moosewoman are suddenly delighted to exhume the corpse of a deceased and rotting nag for to flog in public. They do so with eyes bloodshot from venality and a frantic spraying of spittle.

Sheezus.

Ugly. Hard to watch. Dispiriting, demoralizing and ultimately detrimental.

They really should be ashamed, if for no other reason than their naked, vainglorious audacity.

Meanwhile, Our Man continues to exhort on the issues in general and and elucidate on the economy in particular. He remains above it. He attacks with vigor and his strikes are surgical, but always on issue, never personal. I am pleased and inspired. Obama consistently endeavors, despite every low blow, to remain on the high road. He is a class act.

Stewart has fucking Deniro on tonight. How cool is that?

Someone yells “kill him” at an event. McCain says nothing. He calls him “that one” in a nationally televised debate. Discourse off course. Reckless and irresponsible. Amateur hour at the feckless cafe. Farting in public. Blowing your nose over your date’s food. Shit running down your leg.

Fuck these guys. They act like they’re new.

Drinks for my friends.

My epiphany smacks of *gasp*, socialism and radicalism.

It’s pretty out there. As a concept, I mean.

Here we go.

Why not implore, nay, beseech those who have benifitted so lavishly from America’s free market economy to pony up some filthy fucking lucre? Why not? Tell me that the collective benificiaries of golden parachutes, exorbitant severance packages and stock options et al. aren’t clutching bags and satchels of liquid capital that could go a long way towards remedying this consummate financial malaise.

Tell me. Why not?

Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates and all their kooky country club cronies. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Don Henley and Garth Brooks. Mel Gibson, George Clooney, Matt Damon and Jay Leno. Hannity, Limbuagh and Olbermann. Stwart, Colbert and that guy in the Mac commercials. Letterman.

Lotsa these guys are already philanthropic. Together, our overpaid celebrities, athletes and CEO’s could go a long way towards solving this. That is of course, if they are true patriotic Americans.

All of the aforementioned and thousands of others are going to be just fine regardless of the way the bail out is structured or who wins this election. Little, if not nothing, to lose.

What say you elites?

I mean to say, if you care at all about the normal workaday citizens who put all that money in your pockets in the first place.

After all, the dramatic shift in the concentration of wealth is at the root here, a phenomena as culpable as any impropriety or outright fuckery. It was unsustainable. No way was it gonna fly for very long at all. Many of you have been on the tit for way too long.

Most of you.

Put that chunk of their wealth into a fund for the people. An institution created for the sole purpose of helping average Americans to keep a roof over their heads and maintain the ability to feed and clothe their children. It’s not socialism if it’s not a government mandate. It’s profoundly American if they choose to share their good fortune and give back to a society that has made their success possible in a world that otherwise may have excluded them.

Not subversive in any way, as long as the institutions recieve not a single red penny. Could be a complex bureaucracy, but not if you let me run it. Trust me to rock that shit.

By the way, Doubtfire put his giant vagina in full view today after recieving a phone call from Our Man seeking cooperation for a joint statement this morning. In a shallow attempt at one-upmanship, McCain announced this afternoon his intention to suspend his campaign to devote his limited energies towards the economic crisis. He also requested tomorrow night’s debate be postponed.

Fumble.

Look at my thumb. Gee, you’re dumb.

A blatant and obvious attempt by a man losing serious ground, to wrest attention away from his atrophy by waving a needle full of politics, Presidential politics, at the most serious financial issue America has faced since the Great Depression. John McCain is a cowardly, opportunistic douchebag.

In all seriousness and with all due respect, the harbinger is no longer that. Doom is in the front yard. We are here. The wolf is just outside the door. We can neither come or go. Understand that homeless people will no longer be an exclusive fixture of metropolitan areas. We are flirting with soup kitchens and tent cities are already a burgeoning reality. People are about to suffer in ways most of of us have never witnessed. This is bad.

It bears pointing out that before Dick-in-Bush usurped power, we had an actual surplus and things were no less than rosy. I remind you of the painfully obvious, the entire state of the union is completely fucked. My uncles proud men all, Republicans all, must answer the question. They owe me a reasoned explanation as to how and why they intend to give these idiots one more chance.

An alcoholic has stolen from your wallet, your wife’s purse, set the house on fire and provided illegal drugs to your children. Do you still open your arms to him for Sunday dinner? Loan him twenty bucks?

Maybe you do because he’s family. You certainly don’t hand him the keys to your car, much less the goddamn universe.

You know what? America, a once proud, prosperous and generous nation is on the verge of collapse. Chaos. Lawlessness. You think Iraqis went full tilt boogie once the rule of law was removed? Wait ’til you see Americans in action when there’s no gas, no food, no infrastructure and no rule of law. What happened in New Orleans will be a microcosm and will look Fisher fucking Price in retrospect.

Dumbya swore as late as March and McCain as late as last week that the fundamentals of the American economy are sound. For any of you who still buy that, good luck. You’ll soon be on your own.

No matter what, this will be ugly. Vulgar even. No miracles, unless the fruit of my epiphany somehow busts forth with a froth of delicious and copious juice. We all understand how unlikely that is. We are fucked. It’s important to remember who fucked you.

All that remains is to choose the right man to captain our ship through violent seas. McCain has never steered a ship and he’s crashed at least four planes.

Drinks for my friends.

Bitches.

Still in the full body condom, America’s moose gutting mom avoids engaging the media like the kid in the Casper costume glimpsing the gang of Metallica wannabes drinking beer and leaning against a Camaro after midnight on all hallows eve. Nose running. With a fuckin pillow case full of The Kind.

She’s afraid and so is the campaign. The polite term is neophyte. The accurate term is wolf slaughtering doe in the headlights.

I hear the next official media exposure will be a gritty, no holes barred interview with Sean Hannity. What we have here is the body condom, a net, some matresses and a fucktard. Sheezus. If Americans are actually this dumb, how does bread end up on the shelves? Produce?

“The fundamentals of the American economy are sound”, now watch while I coin this phrase.

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

That’s really the salient argument here. The catastrophe that keeps giving. We’ve gotta half a billion dollar a day war addiction and the banks are dropping like flies. Big ones. The biggest ones. People are dying.

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

I heard tonight the housing debacle will begin to heal early next year. Bullshit. America has a chronic and potentially lethal fiscal disease. Picture liver and kidney failure.

There is a cure. Might be too late though.

The housing conflagration was merely the first obvious symptom. Pretty nasty boils, but a symptom nonetheless. Not unlike those carbuncles from my last blog. These knuckes of flesh will still be festering and oozing after first thaw.

The disease is another matter. I’m here to talk about the part of the disease that is pure, blind hubris. It’s name is Sarah Palin and she doesn’t know shit. That is exactly why she thinks she can do this, because she doesn’t know shit. She has no fucking idea where she may be allowed to walk.

You’ve got be fucking kidding me.

She’s under investigation, she’s ducking subpeonas. Half the women in her state loathe her. This is ridiculous. The top of their ticket is seasoned, albeit bitterly, and the bottom is a blowhard. She shouts less than nothing. She lies. Bridge To Nowhere anyone? ANYONE? Earmarks, Bueller, Bueller? The plane, the plane? Tattoo?

It’s a goddamn joke half of us are too stupid to get.

Americans are astonishigly stupid.

Know what really chaps my ass? The drooling, sewage vomiting, talking head Republicans. They just make shit up. I’m constantly asking myself how they can sit through makeup etc. and appear on camera fully prepared to utter the words that manifest into sentences and then paragraphs of such transparent, wholesale, sociopathic lies.

Yes, I understand we do it too. It bothers me. I offer this caveat: my side is rarely, if ever as audacious and never as vicious as the Republicans. Have you seen them go after each other? For what it’s worth, my side is not exclusively Democratic, they are always independent thinkers.

Republicans routinely push the envelope of decency and consistently push past the bounds of common sense. Always beyond reprehensible. No ethical imperative. No moral compass.

The Malfeasance of Idiocrasy.

Drinks for my friends.

Oh fuck.

Bloodiest month in Iraq since September of last year. It’s Iran’s fault, they tell us. It’s not that the surge is no longer working, they assure us.

It’s that it never did, I assure you.

Stupid idea. Too little. Too late.

A band aid applied with the hope it would staunch the wound long enough for Dick-in-Bush to make a getaway. It was a matter of time until the dam breached itself by an artery that just wasn’t able to contain the pressure of all that blood.

They don’t have another one.

In what may be the cruelest and simultaneously most hysterical whirling dervish of irony I’ve ever witnessed, our nation has an immediate and affordable solution to the shattered back of our fighting force. The numbers are somewhere between twelve and twenty million. It’ll be a little less logistically efficacious if we decide to build that stupid border fence, but still doable.

Just think, we could all sleep a little easier knowing that we’re finally justified in paying them a fair wage as well as covering their medical needs etc.

See, they’d be dying for us while we sleep and have barbecues on Sunday. Well, not us, but the military industrial complex.

Draft the illegals!

I feel comfortable playing the race card.

Not really.

In other news, our Little Bootlicker pissed all over a bill that sought to mandate equal pay for women because he feared the lawsuits that would emerge. Um, isn’t that the point asshole?

Don’t forget, Doubtfire is on record as in favor of permanent tax cuts to the wealthy while we are facing perhaps the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. Rice is being rationed in America for fuck’s sake. He’s cool with us staying in Iraq for a hundred years and it explains it with the example of our presence in Germany or South Korea.

Anybody remember any American soldiers dying in either of those two countries in combat in say, the last three decades?

Both Shrillary and McCain are in favor of a moratorium on federal gas tax for the summer. Great idea. Profound and inspired despite it’s being another goddamn blatant and pandering populist band aid to demonstrate how they feel our pain.

Never mind the jobs and money lost to our highway and bridge repair infrastructure, it won’t save you shit.

Check the crab in a bucket metaphor from the last blog.

Another suggestion along the same lines would be a mandate that all children, everywhere walk to school. Not even parents can drive them. They must get there under their own power. Can you imagine the money that could be saved?

We should go back to making everything out of wood. Soft drink containers and dashboards and polyester pants for fat people as well as the the stylistically challenged. Lenses and guns and amplifiers. Imagine a wooden computer.

You could safely use Pledge on it.

Why, it’s a renewable resource.

In America, the lights are on, but nobody’s home.

How did we become the stupidest and richest country on earth?

Wait. I know

Lust and greed?

Beer?

Gin!

Tonight on CNN, Michelle Obama said of the Wright controversy, she was finished talking about it. as is her husband, and that the issue would only die when the media diegns to acquiesce. I shouldn’t be allowed to say it after that last sentence but. WORD.

Every once in awhile I wonder if we all aren’t just stupid enough to not realize we are pell mell towards either the sun melting us, or a demise of our own.

Like the sun melting us.

I can see the world on my plasma TV. I communicate with all of you via a MAC. I have hand held devices that I can talk to the world with or control the signals beamed at me from a satellite in orbit.

I don’t see much progress. So far, no big picture shared by a majority of our species. It’s still neanderthal. Set huge fires. Everyman for himself. Get yourself a woman. Bacon is good.

Drinks for my friends.

Yesterday Dumbya, in an earnest impersonation of Alfred E. Newman, told us no worries, we’re not in a recession.

Oil up over one hundred seventeen dollars a barrel. Up from thirty or so under Clinton. You’re all aware, I’m sure, of the mortgage bloodbath. The job deficit. Half a million a minute in Iraq on CREDIT.

Those stimulus checks are on the way. Help you out with that two hundred percent increase at the pump. Yep, help to pay ExxonMobile. Richest corporation in the history of man. Sounds good. Nice little circle of larceny.

It goes on and on.

(CNN) — John McCain’s campaign sent supporters a fundraising e-mail Friday that claims Hamas approves of Democrat Barack Obama’s foreign policy vision, and is hoping for his victory this fall.

I guess there’s some truth to this but for fuck’s sake people, you think they’d put their money on a man like Doubtfire who thinks we can hang around for a hundred more years?

I an upcoming interview on 60 Minutes, Supreme Court Antonin Scalia says of the controversial decision which handed Bush the Whitehouse in two thousand that America needs to “Get over it”.

I hate that prick. You know, he and Darth Cheney are pals.

And once again we are being beaten about the head shoulders with the opinions of Jeremiah Wright. I will point out again, ad nauseam , there isn’t much of what he said that isn’t true. How goddamn sad our man is being impugned by the media for truths he did not even utter.

“In a fiery sermon in April 2003, Wright said: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America.”

“God damn America … for killing innocent people.”

“God damn America for threatening citizens as less than humans”

“God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own backyard. America is chickens coming home to roost.”

“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said. “Hillary would never know that.”

“Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.”

-All quotes from FOXNews.com

You motherfucking tell me what is dishonest or untruthful about any of that. America’s problem is that she cannot handle the truth. Goddamnit and goddman you who would question that. We are a society of cowards, hypocrites and cold calculating reptiles.

On September 18, 2006, Pastor John Hagee — whose endorsement Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said this past Sunday he was “glad to have” — told NPR’s Terry Gross that “Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.” “New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God,” Hagee said, because “there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came.”

Now, that offends me and my sensibilities.

Shrillary is ahead in the popular vote if you count Florida and Michigan even though they all agreed they don’t count. That’s her new bugle from atop the hill.

Gimme a fucking break.

Anybody notice we’re not talking about the war?

It’s pretty bad again.

I believe the second and last time I heard my mother say the word “fuck”, her sentence was something like, “We are the best country on earth and we are going to fuck it up.”

The first time had something to do with me not vacuuming the astro turf on the porch in front of the trailer when I was fourteen.

I am in awe. I can’t believe this shit.

You people are as hopelessly gullible as a small gathering of primates. I don’t doubt they’d be embarrassed eventually.

They are ramming this shit down your throats because the only thing that gets you off is to gag on it.

Understand that this is a man who comes from just a slightly different place than most of you and I. That’s a good thing. Just consider, he has already seen what you are about to see and he may just be the man to help you through it. Change must come. It’s only now begun to arrive. The antidote will only come from a man such as this. I don’t see any others, and if you’re smart, you’ll be happy he’s here.

And stop worrying that he’s some sort of Muslim or that he hates America.

Don’t be a damn fool.

Drinks for my friends.

Hey kids. Hope you’re all in the mood for a puppet show because I am. If you look close, you’ll see that many of the puppets have freckles and some even wear glasses. Be good to yourself!

A net loss of eighty thousand jobs last month. Three airlines go under in one week. Record foreclosures and an outrageously exorbitant bailout of Bear Stearns by the Federal Reserve, i.e. your money.

Celent, a financial research firm, is forecasting a loss of two hundred thousand banking jobs over the next twelve to eighteen months. That’s one tenth kids. Expect to see similiar fallout from virtually every other private sector.

We are fighting a pointless war, the cost of which is said to be in excess of one hundred thousand dollars a minute. It is not being paid for. Yet. America is waging this war on credit. Future generations will get this tab. The cost, the burden, in lives, money, respect and trust from the world community, to be borne by Americans for decades to come.

We renewed the Blackwater contract 🙂

Decades, at least.

Lest ye think this surge in Iraq is going well, they’ve twice attacked the goddamn green zone. Three dead yesterday. Two dead and seventeen wounded in the safest place in Iraq. Yesterday. They are killing people in the Green Zone.

Baghdad is burning again.

Five shootings in the San Fernando valley this weekend. Crime in the greater Los Angeles area is way up. Local news loves this shit.

Meanwhile, the asshats in Washington stand around wringing hands over the definition of “recession”. They’re gonna send us three to six hundred bucks apiece and they encourage us to spend it. That should do it. I would’ve said three fifty to six fifty, but whatever. Six of one, one half dozen of the other.

In the spirit of ad nauseam, we spend about seven thousand per public school student, around thirty thousand per prisoner. We incarcerate more people per capita than any nation on earth. On the face of the planet. More than half of our entire budget is for killing people and blowing shit up. We do not have universal health care.

The American middle class atrophies faster than the polar icecaps.

This is the legacy of Dumbya. His legacy is our perfect storm. It will be a long one.

This is fucked up. It is ridiculous.

I’m seriously starting to wonder if agriculture might not be the next hot job ticket. I’m nervous because I live in the city and there’s no place to plant carrots.

We, as Americans, mill around bleating like sheep over a black man or woman or maybe the guy who wants to pursue a pointless war indefinitely and an absolute clusterfuck of economic policies.

We are pathetic.

Everyone holds their breath over whether Pennsylvania will end up more misogynist than racist, and if so, to what degree. I’m over it. We’ll never get exactly what we want or what we need but can someone tell me why the fuck McCain is in this race?

Are there that many of us that are that stupid? He’s insane. How much you wanna bet we either catch him asleep or drooling on camera before the General in November? He’s seventy two years old. My mother is the same age, I wouldn’t vote for her and she’s not insane.

Sheezus!

As much as I hate to say it, we need you people. What do we have to do? You already know we won’t take your guns away. Chuck Heston took the dirt nap today and I’m wondering if they’ve pried it from his cold dead hands yet.

I couldn’t wait to make that joke.

We all want the same things. Safety and security. A decent living wage and a fair amount of personal freedom. Those things have all eroded over the past seven years, more rapidly than at any other time in American history.

Our founding fathers spin in their sarcophagi begging for a tachometer.

Aren’t there at least some of you that understand we need something new? C’mon. The sky is about to fall. No matter what we do it’s gonna get worse. How bad do you want it to be?

Don’t be stupid.

Drinks for my friends.

I want to talk about politics.

There’s not fuck all to say. Same as it’s been for a week. For the first time in a long time, I’m not engrossed, pissed or excited.

The Reverend Wright conflagration seems to finally be on the wane. For this I’m grateful because he merely spoke the truth, as unpalatable as it was for those who are fond of plunging their heads into the sand.

I loathed the entire spectacle because he not only spoke from a justifiably angry heart, Senator Obama refused to disown him out of loyalty and integrity. There was a certain beauty and honesty to the story that America missed because the media didn’t foist it on a steaming platter.

They chose the opposite. The simpler of the two. I’m pretty sure they did that because they think we’re all stupid. I’m not surrounded by brain surgeons and physicists, are you?

He did the right thing.

Dominating the over twenty four hour news cycle this last week is whether Shrillary should walk away or not. No mad fuck opinion here. Once the primary process plays out, given the writing is on the wall, I would take exception if she doesn’t act responsibly. Otherwise, I’ve no real dog in this hunt and neither should you.

It’s very unlikely that Superdelegates will even attempt to subvert the will of the people. In the context of a gigantically criminal, incredibly specific and therefore surgically effective disenfranchisement that’s gone on for eight years, particularly unto Democrats, I’m assuming we all agree that would be really fucking stupid.

The reason I’m not running for President is I would have invited that bitch to take a walk. With her husband. You two are a serious braintrust; do the math. Not gonna happen unless maybe Billary has an an early October suprise.

There’s still a lot of us that are at least scared enough to forget to hope.

Don’t forget how crazy it is. A powerful and ominous cleric in Iraq with his own army, gets a bug up his ass and chaos occurs with a finger snap. We really have that shit under control.

I’m get some solace from the idea that Muqtada al-Sadr is making our Little Bootlicker McCain look like a doddering chimp.

Did you see the clip of Lieberman schooling Doubtfire?

I loathe Lieberman.

Doubtfire has hitched his little red tricycle to this ridiculous turned pathetic war and “The Surge”. Oh, and permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and “overhauling” social security. How much you wanna bet he’s already got presenile dementia?

The economy is swirling down the shitter. Tricycles don’t float.

Biggest, best, boldest thing we can do for the economy is end the war and start investing in infrastructure. See, that can be steady enduring jobs, education, more money in the community and less for the plutocracy, the corporate monoliths. The evil pricks.

It’s not just freeways and potholes. I’m imagining government sponorship of R&D and technology for green and environmentally responsible industries. Like it or not, that is our future. Or we’re all dead.

Here comes Al Gore. He’s not interested in politics. He’s gonna Guru. I say let him.

This is what it is. If you ask one hundred Americans who their ultimate President would be, probably twenty or thirty would have different, unique answers. This whole thing will ultimately be decided by one or two, maybe five, in a hundred.

See what I’m saying? Keep your eyes on the ball.

Drinks for my friends.

So the market executed another spectacular swan into a
bone dry pool with a thankfully thick level of bottom snot today.

A negative thousand point score on the dives
this infant year by the NYSE.

Somewhere around half of that this week.

The Fed chairman, Bernanke, warns of impending doom if
Dumbya doesn’t do something post haste.

Bernanke refuses to own the “R” word while bathing in full glare of The American Middle Class gagging on it.

What the goddamn hell is Dumbya gonna do?

Newsflash: The damage is far beyond extensive. It
will take decades. There is no band-aid big enough.
What is needed is a tourniquet, and we will loose a limb. At least.

No shit, we’re in trouble.

I’m a salesman. I talk to people in every corner of
every state everyday. They tell me it’s soft. It’s
slow. It’s really bad. More than a handful have
intimated that it’s the worst they’ve ever seen.

They’ve been telling me this for at least a year.

Anybody with a lick of sense saw this storm on the
horizon years ago.

Duh.

Once again, a conundrum provokes dismay, panic and
fear, when a solution is so obvious it makes me want
to do the chicken dance while shitting myself and
exhaling a two thousand degree flame.

Wait! Flaming shit!

Nevermind.

Let us pause for a commercial break: Are you people
aware that the Daily Show and The Colbert Report have
not missed a godamn beat since they re-appeared after
the writer’s strike?

They may be better even.

I will now pontificate with some abandon.

See, I came to understand as an audio engineer, that
the middle frequencies should be approached with great
care. Between one and five kHz is very precarious
territory.

Abuse of that land will ruin a song or an entire
record.

Young and callow practitioners of the audio arts ought
to be denied access to that real estate we all hear so well. Left to their own devices among the upper and lower registers

Learn to caress the top and the bottom. Make them
happy and accomodating of the middle. Allow
them to compliment and limelight the middle.

Get the middle on tape faithfully and you may be more than half way down the road.

Life is about the middle as well as the ends.

Salt and pepper.

Good salt.

Good pepper.

The analogy is seamless.

Stupid politicians shouldn’t be allowed any power or
influence over the middle class.

The middle allows and provides for a Republic. The
middle is the catalyst for a democratic ethic and a
free yet honest economic engine.

Forgive my flag, but America’s middle is consensus. Tolerance. And of course, passion and compassion.

The very fiber of The American Dream is the provenance
of it’s middle class.

Any candidate that even whispers “tax cuts” at this
point, better be talking about it as part of a
stimulus for the middle class and thus the economy at
large.

Even that, is likely foolish and irresponsible
pandering on part of any mouth it escapes.

Otherwise, and for any other reason, FUCKTARD should be
branded backwards on his or her forehead so he or she
can read it in the mirror for the rest of his or her
life.

More than half of them would distract you with the
notion that you should most fear an angry Arab
with a suitcase nuke.

This, while the most credible
and legitimate threat facing most of us is an
economic apocalypse.

How about we stop spending a half a million dollars a
minute on this ridiculous fucking war and spend a
fraction of it here at home to repair the damage
wrought by our aronists laureate, Dick-in-Bush?

Maybe roll back those now infamous tax cuts on the
wealthiest of Americans?

I’m a populist humanist because the American Middle is being
shat upon.

Housing, Energy and Retail suck. A virtual guarantee
that we are about to be caught in the toilet’s swirl.

This is going to suck.

Drinks for my friends.