AMERICA IN CRISIS (funeral tune playing in the background)

For the past week or two, the word (from the Bush regime and everyone who makes a living parroting 'the authorities', including 'the media') is that we are all going to die, unless the congress agrees to give a couple of people working for Bush the ability to spend $700 billion, more or less as they see fit.

Why should anyone assume or agree that all these wiseguys who had not a clue and no idea that this was coming, now know exactly what it takes to fix everything and have the ability to predict what would happen if everyone was not following their wise advice?


how do you know that "our economy will implode unless..."?

These are, more or less, the same people who did NOT see this coming until after it happened who now claim that they know exactly what is going to happen if 'we' do A (salvation) or B (possible salvation) or if we do nothing (catastrophe).

Let me suggest some other possible outcomes:

- catastrophe no matter what - such things tend to happen when you owe tens of trillions, keep printing money and consume more than you make for 30 years in a row.
- recovery without state intervention - maybe the crisis is not as big as the scaremongers claim it is (how big a lie would 'you' be willing to tell if the prize was your controlling close to a trillion dollars?)
- recovery and more prosperity through wars - see the great depression/WW2 situation

It's early in the morning so I can't claim that this enumeration is exhaustive. I am only suggesting that the 'you must do what I tell you by tomorrow or you will die/starve/be totally ruined" thing could come out of misunderstanding or some ulterior motives.

I heard this yesterday from a congressman, and there may be some truth in it: "Paulson is not a banker or an economist, he is basically a day trader". Now, how scary is THAT? Would you agree to give $700 billion to a day trader so that he can play with it and maybe make you some money if the deadline to make the decision was 'by tomorrow'?

The McCain Tear-jerkoff

Hey, is everyone aware that McCain was a prisoner in Hanoi - that's Viet-nam, for the geographically-unaware among us? I thought I reminded everyone, just in case.
What impressed me most at yesterday's GOP convention finale was the video that introduced McCain to us. They had this section where the narrator was disclosing that, shortly after McCain got caught and locked up in Hanoi, his loving daddy had no choice but follow the plan and order the carpet-bombing of that very same city.
Ahhh... the humanity of it all!
I was all tears, thinking like a daddy. Can anyone even begin to feel and dare grasp the incredible pain but also the heroic determination that's illustrated by this situation? Having to carpet-bomb a city while your own son is held prisoner inside that city? It's... priceless. It's an Oprah moment but spiced up with Jerry Springer-like energy. One can only begin to imagine all those burning... things, smelly things. I believe they live in huts over there... limbs flying around, those disgusting, bloody, mutilated corpses, all endangering the life and well-being of poor but brave, precious Jhonny McCain, trying to survive in a city that his own daddy is carpet-bombing.
It's tragic and it's inspiring.
Oh, and McCain showed all this moral and heroic qualities. Believe it or not, he did NOT jump the line when it came to get out of the POW hotel and he DID allow the POWs who got caught before him to go home before him. He does tell us that, not taking advantage of his privileged situation, this one time, was VERY hard but... he heroically followed the rules of basic decency. Once.
And that's why, my friends, McCain should be given the job of president of the United States.

I believe it's one of the greatest movies ever made and a milestone in the history of kitsch. You got these 3 aging yentas - aging like in semi-decomposed - literally murdering ABBA's music. I LOVE ABBA and watching and listening to a 90-year old on steroids and in high heels belching 'Dancing Queen (she's only 17)'... holy geriatric mermaids!!! Meryl Streep should be so proud of herself, displaying the musical talent of an elephant and the dancing grace of a cow.

And, to everyone's delight, especially of those great parents taking their little daughter to this great show, there ARE lots of family values being promoted here. Let's enumerate some:

- Merryl Streep graphically showing how a power drill can easily replace a man's... you know what.
- One of the yentas, the ugliest one, grabbing a black kid (teenage?) and screaming in delight about it.
- Meryl's daughter has THREE dads, and loving it.
- On the last minute of her wedding ceremony, she and her to-be groom deciding that... marriage-shmarriage... forget about it... let's go on a cruise!!!
- Same daughter, approvingly telling her mom something like... "mother, I don't care if you banged hundreds of men, you're still my mommy".
- Meryl's daughter and her 2 teenage-like girlfriends reading the delightful page of her mother's diary, describing how she was banged by 3 different guys within the space of a night or 2.
- Another old, ugly yenta practically raping one of the middle-aged suspected daddies because, apparently, she was having an itch.
- The 3 yentas keeping themselves youthful and energetic by means of some home remedy made with donkey sperm.
- Defining fatherhood as the outcome of an ejaculation.
- One of the 3 possible daddies turning out to be a homo - we see his tattooed buttcheeks more than once - finding happiness and, apparently, a one-night stand at the same time Meryl's daughter happily decides that marriage is not something she should bother with.

I am so glad that this movie was made because it is a great thing at giving everyone the needed moral direction. All parents should be encouraged to take their kids and discuss the great message this great work of art.

Giving the powerful message this movie conveys, PC-13 is much too timid a rating. It suggest a G or maybe a K (as in 'kindergarten') so that all kids can develop a taste for sexual promiscuity, overall moral relativism and mindless hedonism at an early age because... it's never too early for kids to learn the facts of life from their very wise elders.

The movie is highly suited for a Blu-ray release because we need all the high visual resolution we can afford and the finest sound reproduction for this jewel of work of artistic accomplishment.

I don't believe that Obama's suggestion that 'we' have a dialog on race should be rejected. If Buchanan's statistics are true, and they probably are, then 'the White side' should have a lot to say on this topic. The problem seems to be that Whitey is more inhibited than the Black side in expressing his frustrations. While the Darkies do hear in their black churches from preachers such as Obama's mentor and, like the homos or the Jews, have been successful in building their own, segregated communities, there are very few White or even 'traditionally White' organizations, clubs, colleges or TV stations. Somehow, voluntary segregation became a good thing for the Darkies but a terrible one for the Whites. Lacking prestigious or 'mainstream' fora for expressing their views, it's the Whities who have no voice and have nothing intelligent to say or dare not say it because they shut themselves up.

Obama's talk looks like a 'lecture' not because he means it that way but because the other side refuses to join the dialog. Instead, Whities are growing and nurturing the do-gooder welfare state, pumping money into collectivist institutions and initiatives, increasing everyone's dependence on the all-powerful State and expecting everyone, Blacks, Whites and Mutts to be eternally grateful for this heart-felt redistribution of resources.

The Blacks should be as grateful for the trillions compassionately 'invested' into their welfare as the Iraqis should be for the trillions invested into theirs. If this continues, the end results are going to be quite similar: more hate from the 'beneficiaries' of such lavish but destructive 'charities'.

The Bush economistic theory:

The war stimulates the economy because you hire people to build things that blow up other things and then you use them up, so you need more of them and keep the people employed. Then, in the place where you blow up things, you need to 'rebuild' so you can blow them up again later - and you hire more people to rebuild what you just blew up. It's... like a miracle of jobs creation.

But, sadly, on the HOME FRONT, 'we' build houses and we don't blow them up so people first get jobs to build the houses but, after that, they are out of work because the houses are standing.

THE SOLUTION: BLOW UP HOUSES on the HOME FRONT AS WELL. This would create lots of new jobs.

Let's talk Kindle for a few paragraphs:

For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, this is the new book reader that Amazon is selling for $400 (sold out) at the Amazon site. It allows customers to wirelessly purchase eBooks from Amazon and then read them on a paper-like screen.

Now, on the acceptable reader. It should not be an 'Amazon' reader but it should have the ability to purchase books from any vendor, the same way my laptop has the ability to purchase stuff from Amazon or from any other vendor with an online presence. The vendor should lose all physical control over the product, once the book is purchased and delivered. It is bad enough that Amazon would have and keep forever a record that I purchased, let's say, Mein Kampf or The Communist Manifesto or God forbid, some book that disparages our beloved president Lincoln - and Amazon WILL surrender such records to the FBI or the CIA the same way the phone companies were happy to let the government record every single communication passing over their communication hubs. It would be terrible to give Amazon (and, therefore, to our beloved government) control and the ability to maybe erase an inconvenient title at government's request, via the online connection or to decide whether I can let anyone else read the stuff that I purchased with MY money.

Related to the above, the architecture of the Reader needs to be as open and as well understood as that of one of today's computers and operating systems. If my device communicates with a vendor, then everyone must understand EXACTLY WHAT the vendor can see or change on my device. Can Amazon know what I've read on the Kindle? Can it see what annotations I made? Can it know how much time I spent on any particular page? Can it keep a record of the paragraphs I copied? Can it discretely update the content of any of the eBooks to eliminate 'extremist' or 'hateful' views when some anti-hate law is passed by the congress? No one knows today.

And, finally, yes, the buyer must have FULL CONTROL over what the buyer purchases. Of course, it is illegal to make copies of a copyrighted eBook but it is also illegal TODAY to give away Xerox copies of a paper book and yet I can buy my paper book and do with it as I please, including burning the book so that no one will ever know that I had it and read it. There are laws that punish book piracy and the paying customers should be trusted to behave properly and be punished when they don't.

Amazon's and Sony's efforts should be lauded but we should be very worried if this model becomes the way people shop, read and store books in the future.

Humor: Bush pardons Libby

The Libby pardon by Bush is a most funny episode and it has its place in the process of total decomposition of the current American 'conservative' clique. It's absurd beyond extreme, coming from an a-hole president who used to joke about the death-row guys he refused to pardon while he was gov'nor of Texas.

I hope the Wilsons succeed in turning Scooter into OJ Mark 2, getting a multi-million judgment against him.

It's insanely funny that the Bush, the Cheney and the other false conversatives were oh-so-worried-and-concerned about Scotter's family and, of course CHILDREN. Their hearts were bleeding like leaky sewer pipes while asking or demanding that Bush pardons the poor traitor ASAP - after all... he's got a family. No?

Can anyone do a Lexus(tm)-Nexus and see how often the conversative hearts are bleeding for the other 1,000,000-plus US inmates who, in many cases, have 'families' and, sometimes, even parents, spouses or children? Please do report your findings here.

Oh... and those Gitmo guys. They have families too, sometimes they even have wives and CHILDREN.